Director, star, and co-writer Nate Parker’s take on Nat Turner’s failed slave uprising is certainly controversial, given its sympathetic portrayal of a religious extremist on a murderous mission from God. But it’s not good: it looks bad, sounds cartoonish, skips jerkily from scene to scene, and seems weirdly illiterate about its narrative linchpin: namely, religion. If you’re going to make a film about a Christian preacher who goes from preaching submission to his fellow slaves (without ever mentioning why, or even mentioning the promised deliverance by Jesus) to leading a holy war, it helps to know something about Christianity as preached and as practiced. We’re told that “even the meanest nigger is afraid of the Gospel,” but only heaven knows why that might be. A possible explanation, made more possible by the anachronistic sensibilities expressed by sympathetic characters: passionate amateur Parker is more interested in making Turner into a modern-day cultural icon than an actual historical character. A powerful story, sloppily told. (2016) — Matthew Lickona
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