More than a curio, this unfilmed screenplay by James Baldwin starts off as a pretty great adaptation of Malcolm X's autobiography. He does an excellent job flickering through time, using voiceover and montage to show the time and history filtered through Malcolm's mind and how it shaped his view of the world. Even on the page, it's tremendously evocative.

The back-half of the screenplay, after his conversion to Nation of Islam (here referred to only as "The Movement"), is where it becomes both more conventional and a lot weaker in expressing what was interesting about Malcolm X's life. The sense of viewing the world through his eyes almost completely falls out, replaced by the Cliff's Notes key points of the narrative. Baldwin also leans on creating composite characters that simplify and bear most of the dramatic weight, ensuring it doesn't become completely incoherent.

By comparison, I would say Spike Lee's adaptation years later had the opposite set of strengths — a weaker early section in a film that becomes utterly electric after his conversion. Helped along by Denzel's captivating performance, Lee captures what was so fascinating and inspirational about Malcolm X as a political figure. Perhaps the extra two decades of distance gave Lee more clarity about Malcolm's impact, just as someone adapting the book today would be able to fold in Manning Marable's extra investigative work.