![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Set in 1863, in the wake of Abraham Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation, the true story begins with a series of drone tracking shots that make their way through the wooded swamp, stretching over a cotton plantation whereby enslaved African Americans, who appear placed in by garish VFX, toil in the soil. "Emancipation" is a hollow piece of genre filmmaking that rarely answers, "Why this story and why now?" ![]() Unfortunately, in wearing these many hats, "Emancipation" becomes an exhaustive, vicious, and stylistically overcooked recounting of a man whose very visage led the abolitionist charge. Who is Peter? A symbol, a resilient rebel, a family man, an action star this side of Rambo wandering the swamp and fighting with slave catchers and alligators? Fuqua believes Peter is all of the above. The character of Peter and the propulsive mood of Fuqua's film have more in common with " The Legend of Nigger Charley" than " 12 Years a Slave." It's not altogether clear, however, that Fuqua's choices are all that intentional to believe he purposely wants this sort of uncomfortable genre-bending. If that tension between disparate styles and unlikely tones was intended, one might say that "Emancipation" is a keen attempt to recapture the subversive slave narratives in Blaxploitation. Instead, it sustains itself in the tension of biography and thriller, brutality and heroism, prestige drama, and suspenseful action film. Granted, director Antoine Fuqua's "Emancipation" isn't wholly about enslavement. ![]()
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