| Apple TV+ | Release Date: December 2, 2022 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
13
Mixed:
23
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews
Dec 5, 2022
Emancipation, Antoine Fuqua’s well-meaning and graphic depiction of an enslaved man who escapes in search of Lincoln’s army and freedom for himself and his family, is a mostly affecting, no-holds-barred look at degradation, inhumanity and, ultimately, inspiration. But at times — too many times — Emancipation also plays like an action-adventure movie.
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Nov 30, 2022
Despite the undeniable importance of this story and the obvious passion of those involved in telling it, Emancipation is more than anything a relatively standard-issue, period-piece action film — and that’s a shame, because we see glimpses of how it could have been something much more than that.
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Dec 2, 2022
Emancipation is never dull, but it’s rarely without its box office instincts for falsification front and center, alongside its star. And while it has been built on the scarred back of a real man, the movie is too busy with the business of entertainment to focus on the “real” part for long.
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Dec 9, 2022
While the haunting aspect of the photograph grounds “Emancipation” in reality, there’s a pronounced Hollywood-ized feel to the finished product, one that doesn’t compare favorably with other projects that have covered similar territory, among recent examples the biographical “Harriet” and Amazon’s fictionalized miniseries “The Underground Railroad.”
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ColliderDec 8, 2022
Even though the brutality is seemingly never-ending, we never dull to the constant barrage of pain—both physically and emotionally. Yet when Fuqua and Collage aren’t focusing on the cruelty of this world, the film stops dead, lumbering through the motions, complete with derivative choices, characters, and dialogue.
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Dec 9, 2022IndieWireNov 30, 2022
American movie-watchers are used to consuming their history lessons with a heavy layer of artificial butter on top, but William N. Collage’s script filters Gordon’s saga through so many creaky Hollywood tropes that the over-cranked genre stuff begins to feel more honest by comparison.
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Nov 30, 2022
As stark corroboration that this country was built on hatred and death, Emancipation successfully rattles you, but it can hardly be described as revelatory. Still, some could argue that today, as segments of society willfully wish to ignore the past and to prevent new generations from learning about it, a ruthlessly straightforward reminder is needed.
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Nov 30, 2022
Anchored by an ultra-focused and unusually low-key Will Smith as Peter, Emancipation can be an intense and at times almost unbearable thing to watch, presented in meticulously composed, nearly black-and-white frames, desaturated to the point of Civil War photographer Matthew Brady’s grim battlefield tableaux.
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Dec 8, 2022
Unfortunately, Smith’s would-be comeback vehicle is hamstrung by a weak script, paper-thin characters, and gets caught too often being overly earnest rather than emotionally honest, something that ultimately taints the integrity of the endeavor and will leave audiences disappointed.
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