Spike Lee, Malcolm X (1992)

The philosophy of black resistance against the white suppresion in the United States has brought forward many great black thinkers and ideologists, and the life stories these leaders had to tell are not seldomly compelling and extrordinary, like Frederick Douglass‘ ‘A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave’ or Booker T. Washington‘s ‘Up from Slaverly.’ But few stories will be so dramatic and of lasting inspiration in American culture as that of Malcolm X. As despised by contemporary and some elements of modern white culture out of fear for the power of a black man, as he was by fellow black civil rights leaders, and ultimately brought down by the fraticide of his own people, the Nation of Islam, as he became to question the power of a movement out of whose ranks he had risen.

An excellent re-enactment of Malcolm X’s autobiography by co-stars Spike Lee and Denzel Washington, who looks stunningly close to the historic Malcolm Little or ‘Red.’