An important historical event doesn't have the impact it should have in this film. That isnt to say the film is bad...its just lacking in real power.

[Netflix] Treats an important topic from a different perspective, and sometimes has script details that are notable and that allow Colman Domingo to be the main support of the film. It's interesting the treatment of Bayard Rustin's double struggle against the system because of his blackness, but also within the black community because of his homosexuality. But it is a biopic surprisingly lacking in emotion, except in a few flashes of great acting, too academic to transcend beyond a (necessary) history lesson.

A conventional by-the-numbers message picture. The whole movie builds up to the march and when it finally comes I'm like "that's it? Bad green screen background?"

Also, stop trying to make Chris Rock a serious actor, ffs.

Great acting by Colman Domingo in an otherwise okay movie. Would be 5,5 or 6 without his performance for me.

Colman Domingo coming in with a fabulous performance playing Bayard Rustin. His performance definitely carries the movie but unfortunately, excellent acting can only do so much when the movie never goes to the next level, especially the final act which felt short and safe. The supporting cast was good but I don't know about Chris Rock, he was miscast.

By almost every metric a painfully by the books biopic, it shines in only one real way: Domingo’s performance. Charming, human, lived in, it deserves the praise it’s gotten, even as the film sands down and ignores the worst, most compromised actions of Rustin’s life. The liberalism of its subject and its producers overwhelm it, from Malcolm being a shadowy boogeyman and the youths he influenced being too mean to the white boy Rustin loves to the sequence devoted to the heroically restrained cops including the one who only lunges when reminded of all the black people killed by the badge. A great performance does not equal a great film, and Rustin is proof positive of that.

Colman Domingo is an excellent actor who occasionally tends to overact a little. This is also the case in "Rustin", but I think it suits the civil rights activist he portrays here quite well. Unfortunately, good acting can't hide the fact that this movie is a relatively generic Oscar-bait biopic. Of course, Bayard Rustin deserves a movie about himself, and the topics dealt with here are also important. But the movie really plays it safe at every moment, which works in some places but is never exciting. I think the movie's biggest sin, though, is that it makes the historic "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom" seem much smaller than it actually was. And that's exactly what shouldn't have happened. In the end, "Rustin" doesn't have the impact it could have had given the subject matter and the cast.