‘Emancipation’ Review: Will Smith Runs Through the Bayou

Will Smith’s Emancipation has ambitions well beyond its grasp but works just fine as a streaming movie.

So here’s what happened: My wife lost her phone. According to her, *I* lost the phone, which I didn’t, but whatever. Fine. Anyway, with her new phone, we got three months of AppleTV free, which didn’t sound all that exciting because when I got my new phone last year, I got a year of Apple TV free and didn’t watch eight seconds of it. Apple TV sucks.

Apple TV’s new $120 million blockbuster, Emancipation, does not suck. The movie’s ambition does, however, far exceed its grasp. This is no Oscar movie. I would describe it as a very expensive genre film, much closer to the blaxploitation classic The Legend of N**ger Charley (1972) than The Defiant Ones (1958) or Glory (1989). But it’s still worth a look.

Newly-christened Academy Award-winner Will Smith plays Peter, who is based on “Whipped Peter,” a real-life escaped slave made famous in 1863. There’s a lot of legend and myth around Peter, but the photo of his back, a back deformed by the scars from being whipped by slave-holding Democrats in the American South, is very real. The story is that he spent some ten days in the Louisiana swamps eluding slave hunters (who were all Democrats) and their dogs (who were owned by Democrats) before reaching a Union camp. There this harrowing photo was taken, which was then spread throughout the civilized world by Republican abolitionists to illustrate the horrors of Democrat-run slavery. Peter is said to have joined the Union Army and fought bravely. After that, history loses track of him.

Emancipation director Antoine Fuqua and screenwriter William N. Collage fill in the unknowns about Peter (whose real name was Gordon) with a poignant backstory. Peter (Will Smith) is a righteous man defined by his love for God and family. After being cruelly separated from that family, Peter learns that Lincoln’s army and freedom are in Baton Rouge, a five-day journey through the horrors of the Louisiana swamps.

For the next 100 or so minutes of this 135-minute movie, Peter uses his wits to avoid a shrewd, obsessed, and sociopathic slave hunter named Fassel (Ben Foster).

Thanks primarily to Will Smith’s performance and star power (I never once thought of The Slap), Emancipation is never boring. What it lacks is tension and subtext. If you know the true story or have seen the trailer…

***SPOILER (BRUCE WILLIS WAS DEAD THE WHOLE TIME) ALERT***

…you know Peter makes it to the Union Camp. Nevertheless, that knowledge should not remove the tension of the chase. We all knew the crew of Apollo 13 survived. The movie (even when you rewatch it) still puts you on the edge of your seat. Emancipation is entertaining, but it’s also episodic. We’re moving from set-piece to set-piece, and we know it, and it’s hard to care about characters who are symbols instead of people.

A big problem, and I mean a BIG problem with Emancipation, is the two leads. Peter is so righteous and decent, he’s boring. He’s a male Mary Sue. Look at this photo of the real Peter/Gordon. There’s something in that man’s eyes, a secret of some kind, that I find more interesting than the one-note characterization Will Smith is stuck with.

Also one note is Ben Foster’s Fassel. He’s a mustache-twister;  all villain, no humanity, no charm or humor. He’s dull. Like Smith, Foster does what he can, but there’s no there there.

Think of how obnoxious Sidney Poitier’s Noah could be in The Defiant Ones. Remember how selfish and self-involved Denzel Washington’s Silas was in Glory? To this day, nearly 50 years later, when I think of Roots, I remember how tortured Ed Asner’s slave-ship captain was and how that made him the worst of the worst because he knew what he was doing was monstrous. Asner won an Emmy. Washington won an Oscar. Poitier was nominated for an Oscar. All were deserved and aided by fully-formed human characters who felt real. Flaws and virtues, the things that make up our humanity, are what make us real and interesting.

The woke virus won’t allow that.

Peter is a slave, so he must be perfectly good.

Fassel is a white Southerner so he (like all white Southerners in Emancipation, including a little girl) must be perfectly evil.

This simple-minded, regressive attitude is death to storytelling. You can’t feel empathy when you’re so shamelessly manipulated. It’s also condescending towards black people, towards Peter/Gordon. He’s not a complicated human being; he’s a symbol.

Honestly, Fred Williamson’s character in the N**ger Charley trilogy had more dimension, and it was popular enough to spawn a trilogy.

Fuqua knows how to stage action. Smith has charisma to burn.  The filmmaking is plenty competent. It’s worth a watch.

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