I read Native Son as a teen and again about four years ago as an adult. I had really mixed feelings about Bigger Thomas with an inclination towards hating him. The way the movie depicts him my feelings about him aren't very mixed--I don't like Bigger.
Bigger is an angry reckless young man. The movie can't get into his head like the book can but truthfully, there was no real justification for his immense anger and reckless behavior.
As a production this movie didn't quite fit the bill. The sound quality was bad which made the acting itself seem worse than what it really was. The movie speed wasn't good either. Everything was accelerated with no good transitions from scene to scene. I knew what was going on and why because I read the book, but without that knowledge I may have been lost watching the movie.
I don't want to dump on the movie too much because I can tell it was a low budget production and they probably did the best they could. It's noteworthy that they landed Matt Dillon and Oprah Winfrey. Even Shavar Ross (prominently known as Dudley from Diff'rent Strokes) was something of a known name at that time.
I think that Native Son deserves a better production than it got. I see that there was a 2019 release of Native Son. Hopefully it is better.
