Manuel São Bento
December 8, 20224.0
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"Emancipation struggles tremendously to justify its existence. The overly performative, superficial screenplay fails to elevate and distinguish the unique, true story of "Whipped Peter" from all the other generic movies that treat slavery as a mere plot point to "yet another" action/survival flick - surely there's a better way to adapt these stories?!
Cinematography (Robert Richardson), cast - mainly Will Smith - and some of Antoine Fuqua's direction do a lot of the heavy lifting, but it starts to get tiring and painful to continue to watch shameful, traumatic events of our history being used repeatedly for pure Hollywood entertainment."
Rating: C-