Emancipation: Will Smith Seeks Oscar Redemption with Slave Tale

By Jim Slotek

Rating: B-

If nothing else, Emancipation —Will Smith’s “I want another Oscar” opus on Apple TV+ — will give us a good idea of whether the love has truly gone out of the actor’s relationship with the Academy since “the slap.”

A slave-on-the-run movie that uses every bit of its star’s modest acting ability and ticks all the award boxes, Antoine Fuqua’s Emancipation would be a shoo-in in a world where Smith was not banned from the Oscars for 10 years.

Emancipation evokes (but nowhere near matches), say, 12 Years a Slave. But Smith has a history of being nominated for the slightest of reasons. I once lost a bet with a colleague because I couldn’t believe he’d be nominated for a self-help infomercial like The Pursuit of Happyness. His long-desired Best Actor trophy for King Richard this year was a surprise to me too (Denzel Washington’s The Tragedy of Macbeth seemed like the heaviest lifting in the category).

The movie is inspired by a slave nicknamed “Whipped Peter,” a Louisiana escapee who ended up a Union soldier in the last days of the Civil War. The image of his horrifically scarred back was captured in a famous photo, credited in no small way with helping people understand what they were fighting against. Most of what became his public story is apocryphal, which is perfect for Hollywood.

Emancipation begins at a point in the Confederacy when looming defeat makes brutality even more likely than on a peacetime plantation. In a Louisiana-French accent, Peter (Smith) preaches the love of God to his fellow slaves, who mostly aren’t buying it.

His faith is tested when he is taken from his wife (Charmaine Bingwa) and family because of his blacksmithing skills to help build a military railroad for a final stand against the Union.

Cue Smith’s trademark defiant look, which quickly, despite his value, makes him a target for the various Simon Legrees on the railroad project. Chief among them: a trained hunter of humans named Jim Fassel (the formidable Ben Foster, who’s played the worst of villains in films like 3:10 to Yuma).

When it becomes clear there is no way he’s getting out of this railroad project alive, Peter gets the upper hand, and with a handful of mostly ill-fated fellow escapees, heads through the swamp 40 miles or so to Baton Rouge, which is occupied by the Union Army.

Cue the poisonous snakes and alligators.

Emancipation is episodic in a way that suggests an inability to decide what the movie is ultimately about. The second-act manhunt between Fassel and Peter is entertaining enough. It all takes place against a breathtaking Louisiana wilderness backdrop, shot in an old-photograph filter halfway between colour and black-and-white that suggests Ken Burns might have been the cinematographer instead of three-time Oscar winner Robert Richardson.

The last act is a straight-ahead blood-and-guts battle, with the Black battalion serving as cannon-fodder for a suicide assault on the Confederate trenches.

All of which is entertaining in an action-film way, though the movie doesn’t spend a lot of time digging very deeply into the times, the people, and their attitudes save for Fassel, who opines that if you give Blacks food, “they’ll take our land and eventually they’ll return the favour.”

Emancipation had its requisite, almost-unnoticeable theatrical release, which means Apple still has award hopes for the movie. It should be noted that Smith currently can’t attend the Oscars, but technically can still be nominated for one.

Emancipation. Directed by Antoine Fuqua. Starring Will Smith, Ben Foster, and Charmaine Bingwa. Streaming on Apple TV+ beginning December 9.