Seeking out the
5000 greatest films
in a century of cinema
Rustin
Produced by Bruce Cohen, George C. Wolfe, and Tonia Davis
Screenplay by Julian Breece and Dustin Lance Black Story by Julian Breece
Editing: Andrew Mondshein
Music: Branford Marsalis
Release Date: 17 November 2023
Aspect Ratio: 2.35 : 1
Color: Color
Colman Domingo heads up a mismatched cast that does their level best to give the overlooked civil rights hero Bayard Rustin his due. But this well-meaning picture has a script by the le'me-show-ya-how-to-write-a-really-terrible-biopic screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (Milk, J. Edgar), which feels like the product of some Bizarro World Robert McKee seminar where the objective was to write a movie with not one actable scene. And, as much as George C. Wolfe is a hero of New York Theater, how any film director can make the 1963 March on Washington feel anticlimactic is beyond me.
History deserves better than disposable historical movies.
A worthwhile attempt to give the overlooked civil rights hero Bayard Rustin his due is hampered by an embarrassingly didactic screenplay, uneven casting, and pedestrian direction.