2/5 A HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT!!!
  by S. Perez (CALIFORNIA)
THE MOVIE WAS A HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT AFTER READING THE BOOK(AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOM X BY ALEX HALEY). THE MOVIE HAD SOME GREAT ACTORS LIKE DENZEL WASHINGTON AND YET, IT WAS STILL VERY DULL. "DIRECTOR" SPIKE LEE RUINED A GREAT CHANCE OF TELLING THE AMAZING STORY OF MALCOM X.

5/5 Denzel Washington's finest performance
  by Eric S. Kim (Southern California)
Denzel Washington did deserve an Oscar for his performance in "Training Day," but he should have won it earlier in his career. "Malcolm X" truly showcases the man's greatest acting abilities. Here, he portrays a legendary figure known throughout the world as Malcolm X. The man is one of the most important and most interesting African Americans of the United States, and Washington "became" him in the film. He didn't just act as Malcolm X; he became the man whenever he was on screen. Just listen to the speeches that he gives in the film. Now that's almost scary, considering that he sounds almost like the real Malcolm X!

But this isn't all about Washington, either. Spike Lee's direction, the beautiful shots of Mecca, the period sets and costumes, the memorable performances of Angela Bassett and Delroy Lindo, and the tearjerker ending are just some of the reasons why this film should be watched. It's a classic film that will never die.

5/5 Another aamzing performance from Denzel!
  by heaven blessed
Purchased this along with Glory. What can I say but the man is amazing. The way he personafies Malcom in this movie is incredible. Denzel and Spike, you've outdone yourselves with this one!

5/5 Highlights of Malcom X the movie
  by The Music Diva (USA)
This movie shows a lot of details about the late Malcom X before and after Islam. Malcom was a drinker smoker & drug user, a smooth criminal, until he was locked up for 8 years for robbery. He met this brother from the radical Nation of Islam which he accepted. After Malcom was released and started talking to people about Eligahi Muhammud and the nation of Islam, his so called brothers started to hate on him. Malcom knew that Islam did not teach hatred, that it's not about skin tone but it's about piety to the One true God. This is a good movie it's deep! I say more power to brother Malcom for opening his heart to Islam. Any group that teach hatered is not a religion it's a seperatist radical man made club, not a house of God. Malcom knew that skin tone does not define a persons character.

5/5 wonderful rendition of an emblematic American life
  by Robert J. Crawford (Balmette Talloires, France)
I grew up in the civil rights era, whose public face for us (in the suburbs) was the reasonable MLKing. The other side - the violence and militancy, the hate that hate produced - was only dimly heard, seemingly much farther away. It was a great shock for me to read Haley's autobio, but utterly fascinating and important to understand who we Americans are.

Spike Lee has taken the Haley version and grafted almost all of the important incidents into a single long film. In my viewing, it is almost completely successful in evoking an extraordinary life. You get the factual outline, and better yet the feeling for what it was like in X's times.

From the opening, when he is swaggering in a zoot suit with Shorty, to his seething rage at the memory of how his family was dissolved by race hatred and lynching. It is superlatively acted by Washington, who is one of the greatest actors alive. You then follow X into crime, a dissolute life style, prison, redemption, the acceptance of fundamentalist mind programming, to a final stage of questioning it all. I completely believed the portrait of how he grew into all of these roles with extraordinary ease as well as the mercurial energy of a genius.

Lee succeeds in making X a near archetype for the American experience for blacks but also for the entire society, which we must admit to ourselves is intimately inter-related. These are deep questions, and Lee is content to provoke, in my viewing, leaving the audience vexed and interested in finding out more. It is positively Brechtian in ambition, and here it truly works here. And there is a raft of extraordinary personalities who appear and re-appear, enabling us to see where they were able to go and what they could do.

There are a few things that mar with the simplifications of the film medium. For example, there is the fate of the girl Laura, who is in the Haley book. While in real life she disappears from view though we learn what happened to her, you see X walk by her in his Moslem guise as she is about to service a client in a doorway. Other incidents are too succinct, such as his dismissal of the idealistic white girl who asked how she might help (which he later pointedly regretted), but then Lee had only 3 hours and there is so much to tell.

Warmly recommended. X tells us all a lot about who we are as Americans and even as humans. I believe he continues to fascinate because he died at a moment when he was ripe with potential to change. This film made me weep, once again, as I did in my youth with the book.