SOURCE: Dean, Mensah. “Rosewood: Compelling Tale of Bigotry, Envy, and Violence.” Washington Times (21 February 1997): 15.

In the following review, Dean offers a positive assessment of Rosewood, calling the film “brutal” and “explosive.”

As if bracing us for the carnage to come, director John Singleton begins his historical drama Rosewood with a panoramic tour of the namesake town.

It would have been so easy, and quite an attention-grabber, to start this fact-based movie with a wide shot of a howling lynch mob, bloodhounds in tow, looking to avenge an alleged attack on a white woman by a black man on New Year's Day 1923.

But Rosewood, Fla., was a place before it was an incident, so Mr. Singleton wisely first transports us down quaint dirt roads where horses still compete with cars, past plain—but comfortable—wood-framed homes. We see vegetable gardens and livestock—both fixtures in the central Florida town...