78
Metascore
5 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 90The Hollywood ReporterSheri LindenThe Hollywood ReporterSheri LindenLee and Smith shine a damning, sorrowful light on American racism, through the shattered prism of spring 1992 in Los Angeles. With its dazzling wordplay and densely layered profusion of history and biography, Rodney King is an experience as cerebral as it is visceral.
- 88RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzRogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzThis is Smith's show, and it's all about the writing here, with Smith serving more as a town crier, an information delivery device in human form.
- 80The GuardianPeter BradshawThe GuardianPeter BradshawThe performance is austere and challenging, it takes us through the grim events, their aftermath and the long endgame of King’s life, but without the emollient or lenient notes that a Hollywood treatment might attempt. It is a requiem of a sort, and a sombre indication of all that has not yet healed, or been fixed.
- 67MTV NewsAmy NicholsonMTV NewsAmy NicholsonLee is credited as a director for filming a live performance of Rodney King on an outdoor stage in New York. But Lee mostly seems to have loaned Smith his brand name to get the monologue attention. He doesn't leave a fingerprint on the play, and didn't care about where to put the cameras. The angles make no sense; the edits are clumsy.