| | Release Date: January 15, 2021 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
28
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
Jan 12, 2021
As long as the very idea that Black lives matter remains controversial, so long as our institutions refuse to reckon with the reality that they’re protecting not an ideal but whiteness itself, a cure to the country’s worst social malaise will remain out of reach. MLK/FBI is a perceptive reminder that this uphill struggle is ongoing and nothing new.
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Feb 14, 2022
Jan 19, 2021
MLK/FBI is an insightful, adroitly constructed documentary which seeks to mine new truths from a recent, tangible past. Filmmaker Sam Pollard pits the aspirations, endeavours and character of a great, but flawed humanitarian against the racially-driven, underhand tactics of a tyrannical government organisation.
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Jan 19, 2021
The choices that King and Hoover make relative to the public pressures they applied to one another only serve, in Pollard’s recounting of this bitter history, to twine these men together ever so tightly. This is all part of what gives Pollard’s film its deafening urgency, its tingling aura of imminent danger.
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Jan 15, 2021
MLK/FBI not only offers a compelling portrait of what was, but beyond just looking back, sets up a debate about what will be. In the process, the documentary sheds light on a dark part of US history while leaving viewers to contemplate just how dark its more sordid corners should remain.
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Jan 15, 2021
MLK/FBI demonstrates documentary film’s ability to assemble and contextualize historical facts in a provocative and insightful way, and it’s a perfect launching pad for further exploration of the government’s assault on dissent and civil rights, not to mention the news and entertainment media’s acquiescence in being used as a propaganda arm.
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Jan 14, 2021
Archival footage of King, including a lively interview with Merv Griffin, allows the late activist to talk us through his rise to prominence. Whatever is on those sealed tapes, there’s no quibbling with his charisma or his humanity. Pollard’s questioning, vital chronicle is a fitting tribute.
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Jan 14, 2021
There is nothing terribly new in the telling, no huge revelations or bombshells. Most of the details — including King’s infidelity and the use of Withers as an FBI informant — have been known for years. But that’s not Pollard’s interest. His canvas is large, stretching back to post-Civil War Jim Crow, exploring how notions of Black sexuality were turned into social weapons and into the way FBI agents were made mythical in popular culture.
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Movie NationJan 12, 2021
There’s nothing salacious in the new documentary about the Bureau’s investigation of King, MLK/FBI. What this film sets out to document, put into context and explain is something that began life as Bureau File Number 100-106670 and that came to look, with hindsight, like a vendetta against the civil rights leader and Nobel laureate.
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The Film StageOct 17, 2020
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