Well made slavery picture

Rating: 8/10 (19 September 2013)

12 Years a Slave is that movie that I hear is currently the front runner for best picture of the year at the Academy Awards. I thought my expectations were to high going in to this movie, and that I might leave the theater disappointed, and I did end up a little disappointed when the movie ended. The cast is huge, but Chiwetel Ejiofor is the main lead, while Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Fassbender deserve special mentions. Many people will probably enjoy this film better than I did, but as a current student of American history, I did not find the violence to be very shocking or powerful to me.
In case you don't already know, the movie is about a free black man in New York who is kidnapped and sold into slavery for 12 years. This is by no means a bad movie, as a matter of fact, the good strongly outweighs the bad. First of all, the directing is excellent. There were many shots that stuck with me, but there are two in particular I would like to mention. There is one scene where Ejiofor's character is chained in a dungeon screaming for help, and the camera slowly moves up to reveal that he is close to the White House. I thought this was an excellent commentary on how political leaders made this legal in America. The second shot was where it shows Ejiofor's character struggling to survive a hanging for several minuets, which I thought was extremely well done. Also, the acting was beyond astounding, especially from Cumberbatch and Fassbender. Both of them should win Oscars, but sadly only one will.
It is also important to mention that many viewers found the violence in the movie to be sickening, brutal, and devastating, and not always in a good way. This makes the movie very controversial. Luckily for me, I am very desensitized to violence in movie, and I could handle everything the movie threw at me. I also found that the movie started to get a little boring half way through, which was depressing because The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby was over 3 hours about a relationship, and this movie was still more boring. The movie overall was pretty much just a bunch of bad things that were done to slaves, and then it was over. See this movie in theaters, because even though I found it pretty boring, the movie still gets a rating of 8.1/10 stars for being an excellently directed and acted picture, if not a fun one.