Emancipation

Emancipation

Inspired by the gripping true story of a man who would do anything for his family—and for freedom. When Peter, an enslaved man, risks his life to escape and return to his family, he embarks on a perilous journey of love and endurance.

  • Released: 2022-12-02
  • Runtime: 132 minutes
  • Genre: Drama, History, Thrillers
  • Stars: Will Smith, Ben Foster, Charmaine Bingwa, Steven Ogg, Gilbert Owuor, Mustafa Shakir, Grant Harvey, Ronnie Gene Blevins, Jayson Warner Smith, Jabbar Lewis, Michael Luwoye, Aaron Moten, Imani Pullum
  • Director: Antoine Fuqua
 Comments
  • Too-Tall-for-the-Desert - 18 January 2024
    A Superb But Brutal Movie
    First of all and addressing the many 'film experts' posting reviews, this is NOT a bad movie. I have read that this is Will Smith's apology tour for his notorious behaviour at the 2022 Academy Awards. I have read that this movie just checks the boxes because it uses a colour infused black and white picture and the 'action' has all been done before. I have read that this is just yet another movie about the emancipation of slaves and, yes, I have read that the film title is a bit too obvious. I have seen ratings of 2, 3, 4 and 5 and not many 9's and 10's (for me it's an 8, which makes it more than watchable).

    So, here, for what it is worth, is my opinion. This movie has what I call 'real feel', in other words, it 'tastes' authentic. Of course it is dramatised and is made to entertain, but that takes nothing away from its effectiveness in portraying the horror of slavery, the bravery of men and women who suffered (and sadly still suffer in too many parts of the world) the abject disgust that we feel about the perpetrators and our contentment in seeing slavers brought to their knees.

    How many movies have you seen in a black and white film with subtle colour infusion? I can only think of two others? How many famous actors are noted to be less than angelic off the screen? A dozen come to my mind without even thinking about it. How many of us choose not to watch a movie because its actors are less innocent than the pure driven snow? Not that many methinks. The story and action has all been done before? Show me a unique movie ..... go on, I dare you.

    So folks, if you are still reading this ramble then thank you and do yourself a favour and invest a couple of hours. Not only is it not as bad a movie as some of our expert reviewers would like you to believe, it is actually rather good. Oh, and for those couple of reviewers that posted 'without spoilers' and then, albeit subtly, spoiled the ending..... you ought to be ashamed of yourselves.
  • masonfisk - 9 July 2023
    PART OF SMITH'S APOLOGY TOUR...?
    Will Smith stars in this Antoine Fuqua (The Equalizer/Bait) film from last year. Smith, a Haitian slave now in America, has just been conscripted to work for the south getting their rail lines in order but the keepers are especially brutal which spurs Smith to kill one of his minders causing him to flee w/some others while a slave hunter, the always reliable Ben Foster, hunts him down. What follows is a prolonged chase between Foster & Smith (since compatriots are lost on both sides) where Smith's innate sense of survival allows him to finally get his freedom, fight for the North & return himself back to his family. Smith in any other year may've taken this perf (just from its sheer weight & importance) to a nomination but then slapgate happened so, the film notwithstanding, feels like a mea culpa to the governing body of the Oscars to forgive him but until his own personal demons are addressed not even a cancer cure, well maybe that, will get Smith in the good graces of audiences & critics alike. Also starring Mustafa Shakir as a fellow slave & Steven Ogg, from the Walking Dead, as a Confederate sergeant.
  • moviesfilmsreviewsinc - 20 April 2023
    Apple has made a real hit
    Two white photographers/abolitionists arrange Peter's posture as he sits in a chair. They ask him to turn his scourged back toward the lens, to move his face to the side. The lens pushes in on him, and a totem for the ravages of virulent racism engraved across his body comes into view. Peter asks, "Why are you doing this?" The photographer reverently responds: "So the world might know what slavery truly looks like." In a film that doesn't care much about the universally historic impact of the image known as "Whipped Peter," the conversation is ironic. Because over 150 years later, we're still distributing depictions of the horrors of slavery, albeit, in the last half-century, through the power of the movies. Director Antoine Fuqua's "Emancipation" isn't wholly about enslavement. Instead, it sustains itself in the tension of biography and thriller, brutality and heroism, prestige drama, and suspenseful action film. 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. 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. 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. "Emancipation" is a hollow piece of genre filmmaking that rarely answers, "Why this story and why now?" "Emancipation" hurries toward a happy conclusion that somehow feels unearned in a film that requires the viewer to sit through two-plus hours of degradation to arrive at this moment of solace. The journey to get here doesn't carry the necessary subversiveness or humanization. Fuqua's film needs to either fully embrace the action components for a full Blaxploitation tilt or lean closer toward its prestige aims to work. "Emancipation" is too constrained to be freeing. And the same might be said of the staid, unimaginative crafts: Too often, Fuqua and cinematographer Robert Richardson ("Once Upon a Time ... In Hollywood") mistake sweeping images for big emotions, as though a drone shot gliding over a desolate color-zapped field will break the cynical veil of a viewer already turned off by such bleak narratives. It's especially grating because the pair hits that well more than a few times, causing the film to sag with visually unoriginal repetitiveness. The drudging score doesn't add any further life to the proceedings either. Is the chase from enslavement toward freedom supposed to be inarticulately rendered, so unlived in, so clearly gruesome without the land ever becoming a real environment?
  • melikadand - 30 December 2022
    emancipation was exactly what I was looking for!
    During the show I was so affected by the whole barbaric behavior towards slaves that I couldn't even blink for a single second or allow myself to drop a single tear.

    They did such a great job on the characters Their attitude weren't just randomly clichés,each character even the "Peter" the main one,has to deal with so much things and they didn't just do it cause they want it,they try they failed and then raise up for another battle to fight.

    The part when Peter talks about how he always was fighting them with bare hands and despiteall the torturehe was under through that years they were never ever success in breaking his identity and his character,really hits hard.

    Because personally I could relate so much to that speech.

    Hope we were about to see more of this team in the future.
  • calebcalebwhitney - 24 December 2022
    I disliked it more than I thought I would
    Emancipation is more of the self-righteous dreck Hollywood likes to trot out to make themselves feel good, but beyond that the film is guilty of the worst entertainment sin of all - it's boring. Shot in a colour gradient that made me feel like I had already gone to hell, this film is visually unappealing and not entertaining on any level. I couldn't get though more than about 45 minutes. B movie art film garbage. Smith's performance is formulaic and flat, once again phoning in his "I'm the most important person in the world" persona. Maybe the sequel will be better. I'm holding out for Emancipation 2 Electric Boogaloo, maybe Will Smith will rap his lines and get a little of the old fresh prince into the character.
  • ogdila-46056 - 20 December 2022
    A very good example of a stereotype
    The movie was not terrible, and the acts were Ok, nothing special. However, I predicted the exact thing that would happen with a perfect accuracy rate after 15 minutes through the movie; I can assume many others did. It was a well-built movie with no particular emphasis, nothing new, nothing unexpected, and nothing interesting.

    I have seen many similar movies with the exact storyline, better role play, and even more uniqueness; watching this one felt like watching a Frankenstein of all the films in this genre. I read the story behind that famous photo a few years ago in an article, and those few pages of the paper had more exciting content than this full-featured movie.
  • ront-young - 18 December 2022
    Good But Not Epic.
    I enjoyed the film but wasn't moved. There were a lot of potential moments to show more grit and depth but once it arrived there it sort of fell flat. Despite some people saying they didn't like the desaturation of the film, it worked well in some scenes. I wanted to get emotional over some scenes but didn't feel it. I think the story just starting off with him being taken away didn't give me any emotional connection to his family. The gator fighting scene should have been longer, I mean I still can see Leornado DiCaprio fighting that beat from The Revenant in my mind til this day. This film should have had those type of scenes. Honestly I believe another director would have brought out more from the actors and story.
  • ajfalco19 - 15 December 2022
    Ok at best
    It makes no sense that the "masters" spent so much time chasing the slaves only to just kill them off, rather than trying to get them back to their camp. A large majority of the movie is of Peter running through the swamp while the dogs chasing him are right on his tail, yet not close enough. I thought the acting played by will smith was subpar and the movie dragged. They could've made the film 20 minutes shorter and taken out a lot of the running around. Although the movie moved slowly, I still find this time in history to be shocking and it was interesting to see how it played out. Overall, ok at best.
  • charles-536 - 13 December 2022
    Captivating Film - Well acted.
    Smith does a fantastic job as do the other actors. The pace of the film stays quick and doesn't let up from beginning to end. The sets are good throughout - especially the battlefield scenes toward that latter part of the film. The cinematography is top notch. Though not as prolific as the war scenes in Saving Private Ryan, the realism and impact was comparable.

    Though a number of the reviewers didn't like the heavily muted coloration of the film, I thought it added to the impact and reminded me of the black and white prints I've seen of Civil War times in the past.

    Emancipation reminds us of how low human beings can stoop. I sensed an echo of the concentration camp scene's in Sophie's Choice. Though I did feel that the diabolical nature of the slave drivers and owners might have been somewhat overly dramatized - not in any way to condone the horrors and disgust surrounding slavery.

    I think the scene where Peter's wife puts her hand in the cotton gin to keep from being sold was over the line. That plot line should have been cut. It had no place in the film.

    Emancipation was a great film and it certainly drew me in emotionally. It gave me a deeper insight of what it might have been like to be a slave, more-so that any film I've previously experienced.
  • UrbanElysium - 12 December 2022
    Not what I expected
    I really looked forward to this but when I watched I was disappointed because I wasn't expecting half the film to be a montage of chase scenes with Will and Ben's characters!!

    I didn't know it was based on THAT famous slave!

    If I'd of know both I'd have been more open!!

    Will is amazing in this and Ben held his own!

    Photography was subliminal!

    Some brutal scenes that honestly I can only imagine real life was close to.

    Definitely recommend, but with open eyes to above.

    I can't understand why the studio chose to leave out those important factors in trailers and in doing so might have hindered the ultimate viewing opinions.