Malcolm X
Warner Bros. | Release Date: November 18, 1992 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
73
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 15 Critic Reviews
Positive:
10
Mixed:
5
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
With Malcolm X, Lee has created a galvanizing political tragedy, the story of a leader who, through his very perception and daring, recognized that death — and only death — would be his final evolution. Read full review
100
LarsenOnFilmJosh Larsen
Washington has never been better, capturing the greatly varied phases of Malcolm’s personality while always giving us a full sense of a single man: sharp, smart, with a quick smile but also a simmering, righteous anger. Read full review
100
The New York TimesVincent Canby
Mr. Lee means for Malcolm X to be an epic, and it is in its concerns and its physical scope. In Denzel Washington it also has a fine actor who does for Malcolm X what Ben Kingsley did for “Gandhi.” [18 November 1992]
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
The film is inspirational and educational - and it is also entertaining, as movies must be before they can be anything else. Read full review
90
Washington PostRita Kempley
A spiritually enriching testament to the human capacity for change -- and surely Spike Lee's most universally appealing film. Read full review
90
Washington PostDesson Thomson
Lee's finest, most unabashed labor of love. Read full review
80
TV Guide MagazineStaff(not credited)
Lee's biography of the slain civil rights leader treats Malcolm, not as a political rallying point, but as a fully rounded individual whose life defies reduction to symbolic status. Read full review
70
Time OutDerek Adams
While the film glides from Malcolm's early years as a hustler and petty criminal to his emergence in the Nation of Islam, it plays surprisingly safe as a solidly crafted trawl through the didactic/hagiographic conventions of the mainstream biopic. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
A mortal movie about an immortal subject and the very fact that it succeeds as well as it does is a testament to Lee's skills as a filmmaker. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineEric Henderson
With Malcolm X, Lee doesn’t so much inject his sensibilities into the lifeline of his subject, but rather comes to see how his place as a film director can be integrated within the social movement of X’s message. Read full review
60
EmpireTom Hibbert
Lee's film suffers from message over substance and is slightly tedious as a result. Read full review
60
VarietyTodd McCarthy
The picture comes up short in several departments, notably in pacing and in giving a strong sense of why this man became such a legend. Read full review
60
The New YorkerTerrence Rafferty
The movie is disappointingly impersonal; it doesn't provide readers of the autobiography anything like a fresh vision of its remarkable subject. Read full review
50
TimeRichard Corliss
The film is a lavish, linear, way-too-long (3 hr. 21 min.) storybook of Malcolm's career, the movie equivalent of an authorized biography, a cautious primer for black pride. Read full review
40
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
Lee has tried hard to give this shapeless picture some visual patterning though the cluttered effect created by his mistrust of silence is even more harmful than in the past. Read full review
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