The streaming service Apple TV must have thought it was getting a bargain when it paid a reported $US 130 million ($A194 million) for Antoine Fuqua's historic drama Emancipation.
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The film is drawn from a turning moment in the history of slavery in America, based on the story of an escaped slave who allowed his body, scarred from years of whippings, to be photographed and printed and exhibited across America, helping to turn the tide of American public's opinion against slavery and against the Confederates in the midst of its Civil War.
The film is produced by and stars Will Smith, one of the world's biggest film stars, so their money was surely a solid investment, right?
Who would have thought that Smith couldn't take a joke, and would act like a complete tool, a violent one, when he slapped and screamed at Chris Rock at the Oscar ceremony earlier this year.
Poor Apple. The film's cinema release, whatever might have originally been planned for it, has been scaled back to the requisite number of screenings to qualify it for Oscar contention, but its wider cinema release has been canned in Australia, heading straight to Apple TV.
Smith now enjoys Emperor's New Clothes syndrome, his star tarnished and his works judged on their individual merit, all those decades of social cache burned, and with film critics like me giving up huge portions of their reviews to ponder his actions before they get around to actually reviewing the film.
Smith aside, this is a solidly decent film made with a brutally honest grimness, with strong performances and a highly stylised approach from Fuqua, director of Training Day.
![A scene from Emancipation. Picture Apple TV A scene from Emancipation. Picture Apple TV](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/MxhEgQKUJhZgHxwVaKiqcq/e650f7e5-6bde-412e-9d08-1373d1efb946.jpg/r0_105_2048_1261_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
In the early 1860s, in the midst of the American Civil War, a farm slave named Peter (Smith) is taken away from the Louisiana plantation that he and his wife Dodienne (Charmaine Bingwa) work for.
He is sent to work for the construction of a Confederate railroad where life is indeed hard, working in chains, living in pens, constantly beaten.
When he hears word of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, Peter escapes, heading for the city of Baton Rouge which the Union Army has captured, but with overseer Fassel (Ben Foster) on his heels through swamps and fields, determined to bring him back to captivity.
Rather than wait for the Union Army, Peter goes to them, to join in the fight that he hope might reunite him with his wife and children.
Stylistically, director Fuqua and his team make some bold decisions.
The film initially appears to have been shot in black and white, but we come to see it like flipping through a book of photographic images from the Civil War era, with scenes in sepia, in monochrome, with hints of colour, with desaturated colour or feeling like colour has been hand-drawn.
Fuqua, Smith and team want to use their platform, their budget, to educate the audience about slavery, its grim truth, and there can be no denying the strength of their approach.
The film is violent, the violence is arbitrary and mean, it doesn't care if you look away. Shots are long, some scenes are repetitive and boring. They make their point.
The film's writer William N. Collage has the real-life image Peter (real name was Gordon) posed for and the written history of its impact, though plenty of the life they construct for this man is conjecture.
The film is set up as a classic man-on-the-run film, turning Peter into something of a superhero, at least a man capable of repeated superhuman moments. It's the uncertainty of exactly what film it wants to be that undermines its power.
In most of Smith's previous roles, he has shone when he could employ his favoured tropes, a strut, a smirk, a swagger. They're all gone here.
This really is a transformative performance, played as scaled-back and low-key as possible, not a trope in sight.
You'll decide yourself whether you forgive his real-life behaviour enough to give it a watch.