BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Steineded How sad is this?

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Casey Duggan It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

tom jones This movie was to my liking, it had all the action oriented scenes placed together to keep the viewer interested. The characters were fairly mysterious incorporating wanderers of the town and a heavy set of anti-semetism combined with promiscuity and adulteress affairs. What happened in rosewood was a supposed intervention or clash, not a massacre but maybe a clash of culture. This movie depicts that aspect of rosewood quite well, until maybe the climax where the whole town revolts. The lynchings were due to migration, Florida was heavily under influence of migration ever since the civil war due to lack of farming. The residents did not want to be involved but in fact if rosewood hadnt occurred the whole town would have been forgotten and abandoned. They merely killed themselves because the africans reacted too harshly and triggered a devastating response. It is said they shot the officers or town residents due to infringement in privacy. The anti-semetism involved was far too extreme even for white people. Historically speaking though, the movie turned into t2 judgement day or some sort of action thriller apocalypse, the good guy was prostituting himself with the town folks...maybe he deserved to be 'caught up.' It was just not realistic or believable imho...which puts me to an odds end to where these categories truly fall under. Based on a true story or Based on true events. Authentic movies that I have seen before which portray real events quit accurately are not apocalypse now, titanic or Apollo 13 but documented based movies such as boogie nights, fire in the sky, or mobster movies with the likes of Scarface & Goodfellas where the actual events look like they could have actually played out in that fashion. If you like the latter, you'll like this movie.If the film is good its because it was for the viewer to interpret it correctly. What I think it was is that the wife with diabetes is the murderer whom got shot's wife. The murderer john d or watever is probably the guy at the end. There was probably two murderers he was chasing which he encountered before being knocked out. His wife prob died. The diabetic is probably one of the murderer's wives. Then the movie may be good..okay.

tieman64 This is a review of "Rosewood" and "Higher Learning", two films by John Singleton. The weaker of the two, "Rosewood" takes place during the 1923 race riots of Rosewood, Florida. Structured as a western, the film watches as an archetypal "Man With No Name" (Ving Rhames, literally playing a character called Mann) enters Rosewood, only to find the town's predominantly African American population living on edge with a white minority who rule with guns, badges and a bucket full of resentment.A single incident sets the town alight: a young woman blames a black stranger for the vicious beating she received from her white husband. "He was so big!" she screams. "He was so black!" The news spreads. Local white folk begin assembling. Pretty soon a carnival atmosphere develops, whites arming themselves, getting liquored up and commencing the slaughtering of blacks. Charred corpses hang from trees, houses burn and bullets fly.Though it pretends to be "serious" and "historical", "Rosewood" is mostly a silly cartoon. Singleton creates an African American Eden, one which would have flourished had it not been for the white man. Whites are themselves portrayed as lecherous, stupid and one dimensional. One character, played by Jon Voight, is our token "nuanced white". He's a rich landowner, sleazy, but eventually learns to "do the right thing". Elsewhere Singleton consciously reverses common African American stereotypes: all the white families are oversexed, violent, carnal or single parents. The black families, in contrast, are torn straight out of Norman Rockwell paintings, celebrating birthdays, always surrounded by a warm glow or sitting at big, family meals. Later, Mann becomes a Biblical figure, a Moses who leads surviving black folk on an exodus out of Rosewood and across a river.Like most films "about racism", "Rosewood" has nothing to do with racism. The saviours of our victims are two landowners, the ruling class is invisible and it is specifically working class whites who are demonized. Racism, in other words, is caused by the stupid, poor, irrational lower class. But racism always has economic roots. In the US, racial policy became a means of combating worker unity by fostering conflicts and divisions between groups along racial, national, sexual or religious lines. The revitalisation of the KKK in the 1920s was itself a direct response to economic factors. Such things go back as far as the 18th century (quasi-military alliances between large corporations and governments repressed efforts to form labour unions and conduct strikes), when the ruling class pitted blacks, Indians and whites against one another to stave off insurrection. Indians, for example, were often hired as "slave catchers", whilst "strikebreakers" - workers used to replace white strikers – always came from outside the area and/or "lower" ethnic groups. This, of course, exacerbated racial tensions and disrupted communities. Where Rosewood is set, almost two generations after the abolition of slavery and the end of the American Civil War, many French Canadians, East Europeans and Africans were first introduced as strike breakers. The deliberate creation of racial and ethnic conflict was not a matter of individual employer prejudice but of capitalist class strategy. Ulimately, "Rosewood's" message is typical of all of Singleton's films: evil whites preyed on black, set them back, but now's the time for African Americans to help themselves, pull themselves up by the bootstraps, be good and earn a buck. Blacks, in other words, must now be good whites. Play the game that causes the problem and shunt the problem onto someone else.Singleton's "Higher Learning" tells the same story, but is set in a fictional Columbus University. It contains a number of intertwined subplots and characters, the most interesting of which involves Malik Williams (Omar Epps), a black athlete who resents being forced to represent his school on the track field. The film's philosophy is articulated by Laurence Fishburne, who plays a West Indian Professor. African Americans, Fisburne essentially says, should suck it up, work hard, stop blaming people and put up with the problem. Other subplots involve shy and naive girls turning lesbian after being raped by men and a lonely confused man (Michael Rapaport, deliberately parroting DeNiro's Travis Bickle) joining a neo Nazi group. The film ends in a big, climactic orgy of blood, as most of these films do. As with Singleton's best film, "Boyz n the Hood", actor Ice Cube (and rapper Busta Rhymes) stands out. He out classes everyone. The rest of the cast overact.While the film is right to show how racism as a system has been institutionalised within the very fabric of American social, economical, educational, and governmental institutions, and has always sought to dehumanise, devalue, and even destroy minorities and women, its ending, in which the word "unlearn" is boldly written on-screen, is completely unearned. The idea is that a "higher education" beyond "education" is the solution, that one should "unlearn" what they've been programmed to accept, but little in the film supports this theme and the statement largely comes out of left-field.5/10 - Worth one viewing.

dimplet When something unspeakably shameful has happened in your nation's history, you must face it honestly, objectively placing blame where it belongs. But more important, you need to understand why it happened.That's what the film "Rosewood" tries to explain: How could it happen? It is not something easily explained in words, the darkness that can come over an entire community, turning people who might otherwise give you the shirt off their back into a rampaging, murdering mob. A sociologist might write a book; director John Singleton and writer Gregory Poirier take you back in time 90 years and put you in rural Florida, where you witness the events unfold.We see the county sheriff try, clumsily, to do his job, but things spin out of control. He suspects the truth, but what can he do? Later in the film he is accused by the judge of being too sympathetic to blacks. The judge probably was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, which show up later with their rifles and robes. Those in the mob who are not sufficiently violent are labeled "nigger lovers." Many of the rest are fueled by liquid courage. Even if someone had second thoughts and tried to stop it, the mob was out of control, and might have killed you. We see a church baptism group morph into a lynch mob, a reminder that most Christian churches in the South did little to oppose racism until recently.We see lynchings and a mass grave, combined with mutilations and body parts taken as souvenirs, and parents forcing their children to witness the lynchings. We see Voight as he watches McGill teach his son to make a noose as black homes burn around them. This is a portrait of Southern racism. "You've got to be taught."We see a poor white town neighboring a relatively affluent black town. Some reviewers are skeptical, but it seems plausible to me. There were substantial black-owned industries in Rosewood. (And there were other affluent all-black towns in America.) This resentment may well have intensified the racism. But how do you explain racism, itself? Fear and violence were essential to preserving segregation, which economically benefited whites, even, and especially, the poor white trash. We see some whites standing up against the madness: the armed men at the county line, the two train engineers, the Wrights.How closely do the events portrayed match history? When I looked online several years ago, it seemed, incorrectly, there were many discrepancies. (I wonder if reviewers were also misled.) I learned there were actually two black towns in the area that were destroyed by whites around the same period. John Wright was largely missing from that account, but not the current Wikipedia version:"Many survivors boarded the train after having been hidden by white general store owner John Wright and his wife, Mary Jo. Over the next several days, other Rosewood residents fled to Wright's house, facilitated by Sheriff Walker, who asked Wright to transport as many residents out of town as possible." It appears now from the Wikipedia article that the fundamental elements correspond surprisingly closely -- and the sheriff looks a bit more sympathetic. Still, when you watch a movie like this, "based on historical events," it is vital you read up on the true story. Some movies are 99 percent nonsense, like "Mississippi Burning" -- the actual case took an FBI agent about 15 minutes to solve. "Rosewood" is an exceptionally well-written film that brings you into the lives of the community and weaves together the story of their relationships smoothly and believably. You care about them by the time all hell breaks loose. The result is powerful, but not manipulative, cinema.The acting is very fine, down to the smallest roles, and sometimes exceptional, such as Bruce McGill, who plays the detestable racist drunk. (You hated him, didn't you?) With the beard you might not recognize him from Quantum Leap, where he played God in the final episode. McGill is the central figure among the racists, Ving Rhames ("Dave") anchors the story from the black side, while Jon Voight ("Odessa File," "Conrack") represents the white conscience, as weak and wavering as it is. Music is by the great John Williams (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Harry Potter, etc.). Whether the movie perfectly matches the historical incidents perfectly is secondary. There were other Rosewoods in America, and I feel it is trying to tell their stories, too; you get the feeling they probably all follow a similar pattern: a false or exaggerated accusation by a white woman, etc. Florida during that period had the highest per capita rate of black lynchings of any state in the South. If anything, "Rosewood" may have understated the problem. But not all whites were racists. The problem was the Klan intimidated whites as well as blacks. But the bottom line is "Rosewood" is a brutally honest account of a shameful episode in American history. For that honesty, and that so much great talent came together to make this movie, I, as an American, am proud. For foreigners reading this review, I lived for many years in the South, including Florida, and I can assure you race relations have changed enormously (though all is not perfect), in part because we, as a nation, have been honest about our past. Look up the Rosewood Massacre online. Please read about the history of racism and the civil rights movement in America. That is the lesson I hope other nations will gain from this movie: If you are honest about your past, you no longer have to be ashamed of it.But there is more to be told. I hope that one day someone, perhaps John Singleton, will make a movie about Harry T. Moore, one of the great unsung heroes of the civil rights movement.

Lee Eisenberg Part of what makes "Rosewood" so hard to watch - but I recommend it very much - is not only that it really happened, but also the thought that the events portrayed may have partly been the root of what happened in Florida in 2000. With this vicious racism so deeply ingrained in our society, it's no surprise that Florida's government deprived a number of African-Americans of their right to vote. For more information about these sorts of things, read James Loewen's book "Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong".But anyway, this is a great (and I would say under-appreciated) movie. Jon Voight, Ving Rhames, Don Cheadle, Michael Rooker and Muse Watson all do a great job in their roles. Definitely one of John Singleton's really good ones.