Review: Will Smithled 'Emancipation' Is An Action Thriller
Starring Will Smith as a runaway slave in Civil War-era Louisiana, Antoine Fuqua's Emancipation is at least somewhat convincing that it's not a typical Oscar movie.
Despite the film's important historical background, awards season, and connection to last March's Oscars, Shuplaka's Liberation is not simply a confused picture of a high-profile celebration. This is an action movie.
A producer of muscle films, Fuqua made something less gritty than a gritty drama like 12 Years a Slave, instead a grittier survival action chase film that gets its strength from brutality rather than psychological realism. B-movie construction immersed in Peter's (Smith) desperate but cunning escapade as a metaphor for black resistance and spiritual strength.
That approach makes "Emancipation," which opens in theaters Friday and comes out Dec. 9 on Apple TV+, feel different and more emotional than recent big-screen treatments of slavery. Fuqua's film tends to be evocative and emotive, but less dull and over-the-top. The current hero is more constrained by genre conventions than he should be.
Peter, by many accounts Gordon, was an important but little-known historical figure. He escaped from a plantation in Louisiana in March 1863. Ten days later, after flying more than 40 miles, he reached the Union army encamped in Baton Rouge. He is photographed sitting in a chair with his bare back, marred by bruised crosses, looking away from the camera. Gordon joined the Union Army, but the photo known as "Peter Bizon" became one of the most iconic images of the brutality of slavery, fueling the abolitionist movement in the North.
Liberation by William N. Collage takes these few facts and expands Peter's story. Fuqua cleans the film almost entirely from black and white, offering Peter familiar notes about family and faith. Peter, described here as a Creole-accented Haitian, is uprooted from his family to help build a railroad for the Confederates, with the constant goal of returning to his wife (Charmaine Bingwa) and children. With his unwavering faith in God, Peter's painful journey takes on biblical proportions. The injustice surrounding him and the other slaves was so great that the monochromatic swamps of Louisiana became a metaphorical desert. - Where is God? - asked the man. - Nowhere.
Fassel (Ben Foster), a white man who looks menacingly at the escapees, tells Peter that he is his master. "You will go on the ground because I let you," he said. Facil and the other two followed on horseback as Peter managed to escape. Peter, at first, commits himself to others, including Gordon (Gilbert Ovoir) and John (Michael Luvois). Few movies inhabit the swamp quite like emancipation, where Peter drives mud, snakes, and alligators into Baton Rouge to sound what he calls the "Lincoln Cannon."
As Peter, Smith relies less than ever on his natural demeanor. The character doesn't say much. As a physical act, Smith's performance is impressive. But few give flesh to Peter, and few agree with him. If Liberation is partly a work of historical imagination, the film doesn't give Peter the most basic features of dozens of thrillers rather than history.
Robert Richardson's cinematography is often captivating, though occasionally distracting. The camera gives a lot of focus, as well as occasional flashes of bright colors. But there are also black-and-white images that seem eager to take it to a higher level, even at the cost of keeping liberation firmly in Peter's line of sight.
However, as Fuqua's previous films (The Culprit, The Equalizer, Training Day) have shown, a weak thriller can be a powerful thing. "Emancipation" is not necessary in itself, but it deliberately shows the barbaric inhumanity of slavery and the audacity and unwillingness of mankind to accept it. In the last third of the film, it seems as cruel and merciless as war. Hell is another place in "liberation".
The Apple TV+ version of "Liberation" was criticized by the Motion Picture Association for racial abuse, disturbing images and language. Duration: 132 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
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Follow AP Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP
