Malcolm X

My review of the documentary "Malcolm X" follows its aspects as a movie and not much of what's inside such as plot or the story of the great and controversial leader Malcolm X.

Based on Alex Haley's biographical book about Malcolm X (who also wrote the book), and narrated by James Earl Jones, Arnold Perl's documentary is a collection of archive footages of Malcolm's speeches about race, Islam, his points of view about everything. Also contains images of old films, African-American figures, interviews and many associated things. Here we got the chance to meet the man behind the powerful figure who moved a whole nation into a sometimes positive direction, and sometimes a raged direction.

If you have interest on the subject it's a great suggestion to watch but I rather say that read Alex Haley's book or watch Spike Lee's biographical epic is more interesting and much more enjoyable than this documentary. It is only speeches after speeches and interviews and James Earl Jones's voice-over appears to tell everything about Malcolm's childhood and facts that wasn't filmed. It doesn't have that trajectory side of the poor kid that grew up, made a few mistakes, robbed, was arrested, found a religion and became a spoken person for it and then was murdered. It's more focused on ideas and thoughts then to Malcolm's personal life. Lee's film was very more intense, very true to the facts and follows the book very well. But considering that this documentary was made in 1972 it's quite good actually.

Good documentary, sometimes impressive, sometimes not. 8/10