Entertainment

Movie Review: ‘Rustin’ with an outstanding Colman Domingo is a terrific look at March on Washington

November 1, 2023 12:05 pm

[Source: AP]

The 1963 March on Washington drew an estimated 250,000 people from across the country — the largest march at that point in American history — and was the place where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his iconic ”I Have a Dream″ speech.

It likely wouldn’t have happened without the work of a master strategist: Bayard Rustin, a gay Black socialist and pacifist-activist from Pennsylvania, whose close friendship with King was the engine in the early days of the Civil Rights Movement.

The winning, triumphant Netflix movie “Rustin” explores the stressful weeks leading up to the march from the grassroots level, with Colman Domingo starring as the organizer who many people know nothing about.

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It was he who wrangled 80,000 boxed lunches, 22 first aid stations, six water tanks, 2,200 chartered buses, six chartered flights, 292 latrines, over 1,000 Black police officers and a change to the city’s subway schedule, not to mention snagging celebrities like Marlon Brando, Charlton Heston, Lena Horne and James Baldwin.

Domingo is debonair, frisky, droll, passionate and utterly captivating as Rustin — the film representing the electric meeting of winning material with the perfect performer.

“You’re irrelevant,” Rustin is told at an after-work get-together by a more militant activist. “It’s Friday night. I’ve been called worse,” Rustin responds, taking a sip of his cocktail.

But as wonderful as Domingo is, it’s the astonishing amount of talent in front of and behind the camera that will take your breath away. No matter how small, each performance brings fire and makes the most of a few minutes on camera.

Is that Jeffrey Wright as a dour Rep. Adam Clayton Powell? Yes, indeed. Wait, isn’t that Adrienne Warren? Yup. Kevin Mambo and Audra McDonald, too? Yes and yes. Chris Rock ages up to play a stuffy NAACP Executive Secretary Roy Wilkins and Glynn Turman is awesome, as always, as labor leader A. Philip Randolph.

 

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