Rosewood
Warner Bros. Pictures | Release Date: February 21, 1997 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
70
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 20 Critic Reviews
Positive:
16
Mixed:
4
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
90
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
Deliberately paced at the outset, the film slowly establishes a sense of hatred that makes the violent explosion of the film's second half as plausible and inevitable as the laws of physics. Read full review
90
Dallas ObserverAndy Klein
Singleton may spend the rest of his career chasing the kind of critical and commercial success he won at an early age with "Boyz N the Hood". But even if Rosewood fails to meet that standard, it is a film that reaffirms that depth of his talents. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
The director is unflinching in his portrayal of the horrors that occurred, and nearly all the characters, from Voight's Wright to Rhames' Mann, are wonderfully nuanced, desperately believable creations. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
But if the movie were simply the story of this event, it would be no more than a sad record. What makes it more is the way it shows how racism breeds and feeds, and is taught by father to son. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Despite an occasional narrative hiccup, this is a rich and moving motion picture. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
As the village is destroyed, its people humiliated, hunted down, and murdered, Singleton brings the images and underlying psychological truths of American racial violence to the screen with a brute dramatic force that few directors have matched. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Though Hollywood hyperbolizes the Gregory Poirier script -- Mann is a fictional character -- John Singleton ("Boyz N the Hood") directs the film with riveting urgency. Read full review
75
San Francisco ExaminerBarbara Shulgasser
Voight's Wright is one of many examples of how Singleton and Poirier succeed in suggesting the ambivalence and shadings that make movie characters believable. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
The fact-based story is so riveting and revealing that the filmmakers needn't have used melodramatic formulas to boost its impact. Read full review
75
USA TodaySusan Wloszczyna
It's as disturbing a movie as you are likely to witness this year. [21Feb1997 Pg.04.D]
70
Chicago ReaderBill Stamets
As a director, Singleton shares with Furious a didactic streak. Singleton is no demagogue, but his fast-action style tends to erase the nuances of interracial dynamics. Read full review
70
Washington PostDavid Nicholson
But because the filmmakers stray from the facts, presumably in hopes of gaining a wider audience, there is a cheapness at the core of the film that comes perilously close to undermining it. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
As written by Gregory Poirier and produced by Jon Peters, whose credits are mostly of the blockbuster variety, the film is broader and more simplistic than it needs to be, settling more than it should for obvious emotions and situations. Read full review
70
TimeRichard Schickel
Ordinarily such trespasses against truth would be enough to condemn such a movie, but Rhames' gravity and grace, Voight's pinched anguish as he wills himself to do right, the moving work of actors like Don Cheadle and Esther Rolle do much to redeem this film for human if not historical reality. Read full review
70
VarietyTodd McCarthy
Ultimately, however, the film's ambition, urgency and acute observations prevail over the many stock elements to forge an estimable work that is notably serious and analytical for a Hollywood-produced film in this day and age. Read full review
63
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
But the movie is long and didactic, undermined by the faintly pious air of an educational slide show. Read full review
60
Washington PostDesson Thomson
Making a film about mob violence while showing restraint and humanism is a difficult procedure. Singleton and screenwriter Poirier search for some gradations within the white ranks, but for the most part, every cracker's a psycho with a short, smoking fuse. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChroniclePeter Stack
Rosewood is startling, infuriating, painful history played out as a not-very-satisfying, overly ambitious and overlong movie. Read full review
50
The New York TimesJanet Maslin
The film transcends racial divisions by bestowing equally hopeless dialogue on both sides. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
Watching this, we should feel an immense amount, but don't, and somehow, decades after this horrible event, that void only seems to compound the tragedy. Read full review
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