brilliant

Rating: Null/10 (7 September 2001)

Malcolm X, the Black panthers, soul brothers, power to the people,..those words spoken in the 60's and 70's spark images of riots, impatience, anger. And yet after the smoke has lifted (not cleared) we see layer by layer echoes of thoughts and sentiment from black ancestors who where silenced by the systematic social-polictical machinery. The 20' thru 40's were a MF for blks in the south. The popularity of radio and TV put social and economical issue in our living rooms. Ask yourself, as a dominating presence in America,and evaluating the Black role in it's economics would you stand and allow a system that basically "tortured" both physically and mentally an entire race? (exaggerating? hardly;). Ask the four girls in Alabama who died in the church bombing. What has this to do with X? Remember that bully in grade school? The one tha humiliated you and you could'nt do a damn thing about him? Remember now as an adult and meeting up with that bully? This man was not a Castro, Stalin, or an Amin, he simply said if you swing at me, I'm going to swing back. You cannot appreciate a movie/documentary of this
man w/o knowing/bearing the pain. Sure he started out a hustler, pimp, drug pusher,addict etc. and eventually became one of the prominent leaders in the black community-(although not black America as a whole). Where would he be today? Probally on Larry King, maybe. Anyway this movie is based largely on the brilliant autobiography by Alex Haley nothing more, nothing less. Mr Lee's crown jewel. The reason it was shun at the Oscar's are obvious. Mr Washington's portral of Malcolm is uncanny, brilliant and possibly his best. (Oh sure I remember him getting the Oscar nod as a confederate slave in Glory as whitey crack his ass up and down with a whip). But for this so called black militant? Hollywood likes (or so they say) to award the "feel good" movies of the day. How about movies rated on their merits alone? You know what-F__ Hollywood!