Antoine Fuqua’s thuddingly unsubtle Will Smith-starring slavery drama is an unusually ugly picture. And while you can make a case that the facts of slavery cannot and should not be prettified, Fuqua’s approach, both in the relentless grind of graphic cruelty and the grim, near monochrome sludge of the cinematography, makes for a gruelling endurance test of a viewing experience.
Smith, fresh from his Oscar-winning performance in King Richard last year, delivers a physically committed turn as a character loosely based on a real person. Peter is a man of faith and a loving husband and father who has kept his family together and safe, although they live as slaves. Finding himself cruelly separated from his wife and children, he escapes through the Louisiana swamps, outwitting alligators and Ben Foster’s sneering, sadistic overseer. In a chase picture that evolves into a war movie, the storytelling is propulsive, but it’s cheapened by crude and manipulative film-making choices.
