Ironically, the obvious thing to say about Spike Lee's biggest ($34 million), most elaborate film to date is that it is also his most anonymous. Lee always claims to have seen the project detailing the life of the complex, inflammatory black leader Malcolm X as an epic on a David Lean scale, and it is that which arguably fatally flaws the film.

It is a film of two halves, and in the first, rather toned down part, street hustler Malcolm Little runs numbers, meddles in drug dealing and prostitution, and indulges in burglary in Boston and Harlem before finally falling into the clutches of the law and being sent down for eight years, not - he claims - for his crimes, but for having the temerity to sleep with white women. In many ways this opening episode is where Lee gets to indulge his usual in your face techniques the most, appearing himself as Little's pal, Shorty. There's an explosive six minute dance hall routine tossed off with heartfelt flair, some real humour, and a wealth of snappy suits, but it all goes on too long, establishing Little's reputation as a bad guy on his way down, then underlining it several times. Likewise, the handful of the flashback scenes to his childhood - attacks from the Ku Klux Klan, the death of his father - do tend to smack rather of stock racial injustice from a thousand and one other 'liberal' movies rather than anything too substantial from a major black artist.

Once in prison though Little quickly learns to throw off his 'slave name', replace it with the symbolic 'X', and to espouse the teachings of Elijah Mohammad and the Black Muslim cause. As ever, religious conversion is not suited to the screen and there's a measure of blind acceptance required on the part of the audience, but since the latter half of the movie requires of Malcolm X that he preach, persuade and demonstrate his devotion, then this is made all the easier.

And it's the second half that really commands the attention. In the title role Lee has Denzil Washington, one of the more high profile of black actors (as opposed to filmed comedians), and one attached to the project before Lee even secured the directorial reins from a stream of proposed white helmers. And in essence, given that Lee is on a low light here, the film belongs to the Oscar nominated Washington. In the Zoot suit cavorting of the start he never seems entirely at home, always shooting a nervous glance over his shoulder, and curiously it's Lee's low-key foil that sticks in the mind. Instead Washington is far more at ease when he acquires the mantle of authority and devotion - the photogenic, charismatic Malcolm in a selection of sharp suits and with closely cropped hair - this Malcolm exudes a quiet stature that carries the movie almost exclusively, even though at times it seems to miss its cues entirely, transposing the need to whisper and shout to damaging effect. For example, when the split with Elijah Mohammad and the Nation of Islam finally arrives, anyone less than familiar with the story could be left wonder at all the fuss, and in particular why anyone should feel sufficiently motivated to want to kill.

As is the way with epics it's the set-pieces that the rest build to, and Malcolm X plays it straight to the rulebook. The incident that made his name - a march on a hospital - is powerful, kinetic cinema on a grand scale that shows Lee a dab hand at crowd scenes. Likewise, the assassination in 1965 at a rally in New York is beautifully handled, with those directorial flourishes we expect, reinstated - the preparations are shown simply and practically through shots of the killers cleaning their weapons; all the principals converge on the ballroom in cars simultaneously; and the curious 'floating' shots so effectively utilised in Jungle Fever reappear to major effect.

But elsewhere the epic scope of the film drags the whole down - the pivotal visit to Mecca that irrevocably altered Malcolm's view that whites were all blue-eyed devils and pushed him toward an integrationist rather than separatist philosophy, is a pretty travelogue of little purpose, especially since the conversion itself is explained in voiceover making the actual pictures irrelevant. Judicious editing could not only rein in the excessive length but tighten the tale itself. And there is a sense from the picture that suggests Lee could well have learned from an epic as rendered by his friend Martin Scorsese, paying homage to the great man with occasional still frame voiceovers (a la Goodfellas) when developing this methodology would have added considerably to his own film. Similarly, at one point Malcolm Little seems to threaten a direct address to the audience, a technique which would add a distance and individual style to a film that instead appears weighed down as much by the need to conform to the conventions of the biopic as to serve its subject. Lee himself drew comparisons to JFK, but seems not to have Stone's sheer nerve to go for broke on a mega-buck budget and trust his audience to tag along.

And Lee's attempts to trace direct lines from the message of yesterday to the events of today are similarly variable in their success. The titles - in which the Stars And Stripes burn to an 'X', intercut with the Rodney King beating video - work superbly in their obvious abstract, but the post-assassination moments are less restrained - black actor Ossie Davis's 'our own shining prince' eulogy is fine, but small children proclaiming themselves to be Malcolm X and Nelson Mandela's final summation push the embarrassment meter into excruciating overload and leave a sour taste.

But despite it all, no one can deny that Malcolm X the movie - much like Malcolm X the man - offers much to intrigue, infuriate and entertain, so that at the very least the almost three and a half hours it takes to unfold are never boring, leaving the audience much to chew over at length. And the excellent, intricate score by jazz man Terence Blanchard, augmented by outstanding found originals from likes of John Coltrane and Duke Ellington, is a feast for the ears. It is just that the more distance he gets on it, the less likely it looks that Spike Lee will ever top his compact, combustive, and visually stunning Do The Right Thing. But then again, at least he can be confident that few others will either.