Synopsis
Spurred by a white woman's lie, vigilantes destroy a black Florida town and slay inhabitants in 1923.
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Cast
- Ving RhamesMann
- Jon VoightJohn Wright
- Don CheadleSylvester Carrier
- Bruce McGillDuke Purdy
- Loren DeanJames Taylor
- Elise NealBeulah (Scrappie)
- Michael RookerSheriff Walker
- Robert PatrickLover
- Esther RolleAunt Sarah
- Catherine KellnerFanny Taylor
- 88
Chicago Sun-Times
But if the movie were simply the story of this event, it would be no more than a sad record. What makes it more is the way it shows how racism breeds and feeds, and is taught by father to son. - 88
ReelViews
Despite an occasional narrative hiccup, this is a rich and moving motion picture. - 75
Rolling Stone
Though Hollywood hyperbolizes the Gregory Poirier script -- Mann is a fictional character -- John Singleton ("Boyz N the Hood") directs the film with riveting urgency. - 75
San Francisco Examiner
Voight's Wright is one of many examples of how Singleton and Poirier succeed in suggesting the ambivalence and shadings that make movie characters believable. - 70
Chicago Reader
As a director, Singleton shares with Furious a didactic streak. Singleton is no demagogue, but his fast-action style tends to erase the nuances of interracial dynamics. - 70
Washington Post
But because the filmmakers stray from the facts, presumably in hopes of gaining a wider audience, there is a cheapness at the core of the film that comes perilously close to undermining it. - 60
Washington Post
Making a film about mob violence while showing restraint and humanism is a difficult procedure. Singleton and screenwriter Poirier search for some gradations within the white ranks, but for the most part, every cracker's a psycho with a short, smoking fuse. - 50
San Francisco Chronicle
Rosewood is startling, infuriating, painful history played out as a not-very-satisfying, overly ambitious and overlong movie.