Spike Lee (“Do The Right Thing”) directs this bio-pic about Malcolm X, who I consider to be one of the great villains of American history because while Martin Luther King Jr. was fighting hate with love, Malcom X was pouring fuel onto the flames. Although I’m pretty convinced Lee intended the film to have a more positive characterisation of Malcolm X than mine, I think the film shows what it shows and it’s up to the audience to make the decision.

Denzel Washington (“Training Day”, “American Gangster”) stars as Malcom X, who started life as a gangster by the name of ‘Detroit Red’ before converting to Islam while in prison. He then abandons the life of a petty criminal and becomes a preacher of hate against whites in America.

Denzel Washington is great as usual and it’s wonderful how we get to see him playing Malcolm at so many different stages of his life. The character is interesting because it seems like near the end of his life that he was reforming and could have become a force for good but his old friends from the Nation of Islam just wouldn’t let that happen. Spike Lee appears as Malcolm’s friend, Shorty, and he does a good job. Angela Bassett (“London Has Fallen”) plays Malcom’s wife, Betty, and she also does a good job.

This is a long movie that runs over 3 hours but it does provide us with lots of insight into Malcom’s life. I profoundly disagree with any attempts to depict Malcolm X as a moral individual but I think this film merely provides the facts of his life so I was free to interpret the information. I’d compare the movie to the “Godfather” franchise as well as “Scarface” they all show the rise and fall of powerful individuals. The movie definitely is doing something right when it doesn’t feel like a chore to sit through a film this long.