Spike Lee’s masterful biopic and epic tribute to the controversial black activist and leader of the struggle for black liberation, starring Denzel Washington. The film dramatizes key events in Malcolm X’s life: his criminal career, his incarceration, his conversion to Islam, his ministry as a member of the Nation of Islam and his later falling out with the organization, his marriage to Betty X, his pilgrimage to Mecca and reevaluation of his views concerning whites, and his assassination in 1965.