Critic Reviews
| 100 |
The New York Times
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]
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| 100 |
Chicago Sun-Times
The film is inspirational and educational - and it is also entertaining, as movies must be before they can be anything else.
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| 90 |
Washington Post
A spiritually enriching testament to the human capacity for change -- and surely Spike Lee's most universally appealing film.
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| 80 |
Washington Post
Lee's finest, most unabashed labor of love.
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| 80 |
TV Guide
Staff(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.
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| 67 |
Austin Chronicle
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.
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| 60 |
Variety
Staff(not credited)
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.
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| 60 |
The New Yorker
Terrence Rafferty
The movie is disappointingly impersonal; it doesn't provide readers of the autobiography anything like a fresh vision of its remarkable subject.
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| 40 |
Chicago Reader
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.
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