SOURCE: Nicholson, David. “Rosewood: A Massacre Transformed into Myth.” Washington Post (21 February 1997): B1.

In the following review, Nicholson offers a negative assessment of Rosewood, noting that the film “is a failure … albeit a noble one.”

After making a gangster picture and then one that riffed on '30s romantic road comedies, John Singleton in his newest film turns the 1923 destruction of a black Florida town into a western featuring a sable Shane powerless to save more than a handful of women and children. The result, Rosewood, is a stunning look at the madness of race and racism, and a moving recreation of a shameful incident in U.S. history. But because the filmmakers stray from the facts, presumably in hopes of gaining a wider audience, there is a cheapness at the core of the film that comes perilously close to undermining it.

The Rosewood Massacre is a powerful...