This film shows the friendship and struggles for the widows of Malcolm X (Lindsay Owen Pierre) and Martin Luther King jr.(Malik Yoba) It is a Lifetime TV movie with soap opera dialouge and watered down action. Betty's (Mary J. Blige)struggles more with family than she does with the movement. Her life was utterly destroyed with the death of Malcolm X. While the film attempts to show how strong and resilient she was, the personal set backs weighed heavily on her life. Coretta (Angela Bassett) is less focused upon. Her struggles with making a national holiday for MLK appears to be her only cause, that and suppressing the FBI tapes. We got to see very little of rallies that they attended or headed up; few speeches that they made; or how they lobbied for reform. We did get to see them do a line dance.
The movie is interlaced with file footage from the era. I felt the movie was either woefully incomplete or they were exaggerating the drama through the use of saxophone music. It is a film whose idea far exceeded its execution.
This wonderful movie of American icons was filmed in Montreal and not on location in Selma, Atlanta, Harlem, or Washington DC. On an interesting if not confusing note Angela Bassett who played Coretta Scott King in this film played Dr. Betty Shabazz in Malcolm X. She did a fine job and I feel the film would have been better had she played that role again.
The movie is interlaced with file footage from the era. I felt the movie was either woefully incomplete or they were exaggerating the drama through the use of saxophone music. It is a film whose idea far exceeded its execution.
This wonderful movie of American icons was filmed in Montreal and not on location in Selma, Atlanta, Harlem, or Washington DC. On an interesting if not confusing note Angela Bassett who played Coretta Scott King in this film played Dr. Betty Shabazz in Malcolm X. She did a fine job and I feel the film would have been better had she played that role again.