In his worshipful film biography of 1960s black activist Malcolm X, director Spike Lee buys uncritically into Malcolm's "all white men are devils" rhetoric. The opening credits roll over a burning American flag while Washington intones a list of while Americans' "sins," which includes "swine eating." There is not one sympathetic white character in the film, and Lee presents Malcolm's approving response to the murder of President Kennedy without even a hint of reproof.
Ironically this confrontational attitude may make whites stay away and miss seeing Lee's vivid re-creations of the white violence and cultural dominance that made Malcolm an embittered black supremacist. The incidents range from the brutal—a Klan attack on Malcolm's parents in Nebraska—to the subtle—the painful "conking" treatments Malcolm underwent to straighten his hair.
Washington lends his considerable strength and dignity to the role, making Malcolm's charisma believable, even though Lee glosses over the intellectual and emotional bases for Malcolm's 180-degree changes—from small-time crook and pimp to austere Black Muslim, from devout follower of Muslim leader Elijah Muhammad to freelance activist. Lee, who with customary perspective has already declared this the most important movie of the 20th century, takes note of the changes but never closes in on what Malcolm was feeling.
Lindo lends strength as the West Indian hustler who is Malcolm's mentor in crime after he moves to Harlem from Boston in the '40s, and Hall humanizes his role as the Michigan con who converts Malcolm to Islam in prison, then becomes his biggest enemy within the movement. Freeman is Elijah Muhammad, who seems almost senile and naive, while Vernon is insubstantial as a rich young white woman who seduces the not-too-reluctant Malcolm, and Bassett is phlegmatic as Malcolm's wife. Lee's smartest casting decision was minimizing his own onscreen presence in a role as Malcolm's buddy Shorty. (There are distracting, brief appearances by Karen Allen as a welfare worker, Peter Boyle as a cop, lawyer William Kunstler as a judge and Rev. Al Sharpton as a sidewalk orator.)
More crucially, Lee lets his reverence for Malcolm sterilize the facts. There is no allusion, for instance, to the more extreme views of the Black Muslims. And Lee ignores the animosity between Malcolm and Martin Luther King Jr., other than having Malcolm blast "chicken-pecking Uncle Toms" less militant than he. Lee's lionization of a man with such a debatable social legacy raises more questions than it answers. (Thurgood Marshall said of Malcolm, "Tell me one thing he did to free black people or lift the level of their lives.")
But then Lee and his cowriter, Arnold Perl, based the film on The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which Malcolm wrote with Alex Haley. Still, that fascinating 1965 book was enlightening without being alienating. That can't be said for this movie. (PG-13)
Wesley Snipes, Bruce Payne
If Under Siege is Die Hard at Sea, this is Die Hard Goes Airborne, with a thinking man's hero, Snipes, as an airline security expert battling the terrorist hijackers of a plane on which he is a passenger. Full of fast, brutal action, it is the movie equivalent of a high-scoring, one-sided NFL game.
Payne is the villain, an apolitical terrorist being transported by FBI agents when he makes a break with the help of his henchpersons, including ingratiating flight attendant Elizabeth Hurley and thug Michael Horse. Director Kevin Hooks and his writers exert little creativity in figuring out how to have Snipes overcome Payne.
Snipes, though, is such an intelligent-seeming actor and so athletic that he is consistently convincing in dominating his skirmishes with Payne. Snipes also gets a lively ally in Alex Datcher, as a tough stewardess.
Though the Snipes-Payne fights are predictable, if you're a cheering-at-the-movies type, you will urge Snipes on in his heroics. (R)
Macaulay Culkin, Catherine O'Hara, Daniel Stern, Joe Pesci, Brenda Fricker
Though equal to its original in quantity of sadistic slapstick, this anticipated sequel (see story, page 58) is dull and strikingly uninspired. Little Culkin is still fun, and the enjoyable O'Hara, as his mother, gets more lines. Puerile producer-writer John Hughes, though, doesn't exploit the fact that Culkin is left on his own in New York City. He doesn't even let the kid ride a subway. The only New York personality Hughes uses is Donald Trump.
The premise this time is a smidgen more plausible: When Culkin's family tries to catch a plane to Florida at Chicago's chaotic O'Hare airport, little Mac wanders mistakenly onto a flight to New York City. Pesci and Stern, whom Culkin tormented in Home Alone, show up in New York City and corner Culkin in a small Manhattan building that's under renovation (and full of bricks, paint cans and other ammunition). Hughes and director Chris Columbus dwell on a sequence in which Culkin bounces bricks off Stern's increasingly bloody head.
The whole film is similarly unsubtle. (PG)
- Contributors:
- Ralph Novak.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
