A TV Movie with a splash of Colour

Rating: 3/10 (21 January 2014)

I first heard about this film when reading about the upcoming Oscar nominations, so falling victim to the massive hype the film was receiving, went to see it. The films starts off interestingly enough, a black man and his family seemingly living a middle class existence in New York in the 1840's (I'm sure plenty of us thought all blacks were still slaves at that time in America). Our hero plays the fiddle for a living and is kidnapped by unscrupulous showman who trick him into performing in Washington DC, and sell him to slave traders who ship him to Georgia. By now he has gone through the usual 'Roots' rites of passage stuff, and is quickly sold off to a number of slave masters, good and bad. As the film drags on to the end, all the same clichés appear until his friend from New York shows up to free him from a nasty slave owner. After the film finished I could not help thinking this was not a big screen epic, more of a Fox TV movie, it was cheap, the characters had no depth and the plot was simple and stretched out, it never made me want to read the original narrative, and is a very poor relation to other much more cinematic films, such as the excellent 'Amistad'. The message of the film speaks volumes about the film makers, "lets use a slave story and we can reap the awards" (just as Holocaust film makers use the same tactic). Don't waste your money, you will be bored to tears by this film which at best, should be on at 3pm on a weekday afternoon.