Well-made but that's about it.

Rating: 7/10 (23 February 2014)

I don't really understand all the praise this film has been getting. It's not a 'bad' film by any measure... but it doesn't really say anything new, or say anything old in a new way. It's basic message is 'slavery was bad'. That's it. The main character is just a victim and a witness. He doesn't transform or overcome (it's up to a time-traveling white man to save him). He's not particularly admirable or craven... or anything. He's just kind of there, taking in all the cruelty and insanity around him. It would have been far better to have concentrated less on the too-familiar beatings and humiliations and show us more of his life before and after the kidnapping/horrors he endured. As it stands, there's not much context. What is shown of his prior life seems almost ridiculously Utopian (the North was NEVER free of racism) and afterward... well, we don't get much despite some notations that suggest the REAL story might have been his attempts to use the legal system to find justice for the crimes against him. Really, I think the focus of this movie is on the wrong parts of the story... indicting the usual suspects and familiar villains rather than the smug racists in the North who refused to help the man find any real satisfaction.