But what was overshadowing Taylor’s great achievement was the fact that just a few decades ago, he got off on a rape charge mainly due to a technicality. The poor woman never recovered from this and subsequently committed suicide. Now the courts did find him innocent and he has gone out of his way to speak up for women’s rights ever since but the simple fact that the media once again brought this up just before his film’s release, just put a slight taint on it for me. Was this purposely rehashed to sabotage his film? Who knows but if Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, and M. Night Shamamalong can still make movies then there was no way I was going to miss out on seeing this film. I know that M. Night hasn’t been accused of any kind of sexual assault but my heart and my soul certainly do feel violated after seeing Lady in the Water and The Happening, so that counts in my book!
Taylor initially takes you through the early years of Turner, where he and his family are taken away from their native land of Africa and are forced into a life of slavery on a southern plantation. But from the early onset, you could tell that something was very different about Turner. He seemed smarter than everyone else his age and he didn’t have any fear when it came to looking white men in the eye; an act that was considered to be a big no no back in the day and was grounds for a beating or even a hanging. Turner also basically taught himself how to read and eventually became the preacher for the slave community on his plantation.
Well word eventually got out about how effective he was and other slave owners decided to reach out to his master (Armie Hammer) in an attempt help them. Times had gotten tough in the South financially, so of course the first things to get cut were the meals, clothing, and general care for the slaves. And even though they weren’t being fed or cared for, they were still expected to put in the same amount of labor as they did when they were living the so-called high life. Well as you can imagine, morale and production were down, so the slave owners forced Turner to take certain Bible scriptures out of context (i.e. "Slaves obey your earthly masters with respect and fear…Eph 6:5)) to try and get them back up to snuff.
Well in order to keep the peace, Turner reluctantly agrees to do this but the poor conditions and treatment eventually got to him; especially after the night his wife was ganged raped by Southern bounty hunters. So he decides to start a revolution.
Now based upon what the preview showed and what you might have read about Turner, you’d think that this film would be a Tarantino Kill Bill blood fest, but sadly it wasn’t. While this is still a strong movie, Taylor played it relatively safe as he had to take into account the fact that there’s no way in hell a bunch of rich white men in Hollywood would pay money to produce a film where big strong black men go from house to house slaughtering their ancestors. So he had to put the focus more on the circumstances that led up to the revolution.
Taylor puts in a strong performance as he subtly displays the mixture of emotions that are constantly running through Turner while he caters to the needs of his people and at the same time keeps himself alive by not showing how truly smart and motivated he is to those in charge. Now I’m not the biggest Armie Hammer fan but he also pulls off a tremendous balancing act while playing the slave owner who tries to remain a decent human being to the man he grew with in Turner and his people while at the same time fighting off the natural inclinations that come with his upbringing.
In the end, I wish that people like Denzel and Forrest Whittaker would have financed this film so we could have truly seen what happened when Turner and crew went on their rampage, but instead we got stuck with a relatively bloodless attempt at a coup. Oh well, this is still an important film and I think everyone should see it at some point, so based off of that, I give it a rating of FRESH.
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