Rob Peace

Watched this at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.

This movie is an example where just because an actor is very talented, doesn't mean they are worthy of directing movies. Chiwetel Ejiofor has directed "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind" which I thought was decent but "Rob Peace", despite having good intentions, falls short due to the weak narrative, uninteresting characters and repetitive structure.

The writing explores race conflicts and the system but the writing is cliched and too predictable to fully engage with. Many of the production designs and camerawork were okay but felt cheap. The performances from the cast members were a mix of some good and some pretty bad. Jay Will does a good job with his performance but the rest of the cast, especially Camila Cabello, were pretty bad and were provided with some really rough dialogue.

The direction from Ejiofor feels lifeless and lacking, the pacing is pretty weak, and the tone and atmospheres explored feel as if there was many themes trying to be explored, yet couldn't focus on one. I have read the original novel which the movie is based on and I feel that the movie is a weak adaptation of what made the novel pretty interesting.

Being my last movie from Sundance, it was a bit disappointing. I can see the good intentions here but it was weak.

This movie is slow yet very intriguing. Time story wasn't predictable as it showed someone's triumphs and troubles . The level of intelligence this man had was astounding but yet not so surprising. His story speaks for a community of people who literally succumbed to thier environment. I never heard of the life of Rob Peace and was very disappointed that this story wasn't well known. The casting was spot on and contributed to telling the story . There are many take aways from this story There is a story of the relationship between a black man and his son , the story big achievement in academia, or the will of a young man navigating through life unselfishly !

It feels like the only thing the movie has in common with the book is its main character and his mother. Rather than doing the work of character development in the film, which would require reconciliation of the fact that Peace was a brilliant man who made choices that put him in high risk situations and ultimately cost him his life, the film spins a fable of a messianic, monogamous victim. There is no meaningful engagement with Peace's life after Yale, his travels (and travails) and the impacts he made on those around him. It's hard to understand how the author's wife produced a film that correlates so little with the book and in the end, feels like it does no real justice to the complexity of the short and tragic life of Robert Peace.

I am glad I saw the movie because it tells such an important story and one that is, sadly, all too familiar. I did not know the story or how it ends and I did find myself looking for redemption at the end. The movie however does not fully redeem it self. The last forty minutes are the best part with some dramatic tension you can feel and make no mistake : Jay Hill and Mary J. Blige portray their characters in THEE most authentic way possible, truly the bright spots in the film.

The movie is not very well knit together, it does not flow naturally and does not draw you fully into it like a good movie should. Plainly put, most of the other characters with the exception of an academic advisor( very small role ) and catholic Headmaster mentor are like furniture in the scenes, they may even have some lines but are they in the same movie ? Some great moments of drama in a meandering film which does not make the cut.

Jay Will turns in an engaging enough effort here but I found the whole story just a bit lacking in substance. It's based on a true story, adapted by director Chiwetel Ejiofor who plays the father of the eponymous young lad. He's separated from his mother (Mary J. Blige) but seems to be on decent terms with them as he comes for a routine visit in his dilapidated old car. Quickly, a tragedy strikes and dad "Skeet" finds himself sent to prison for a double murder. It falls to son Rob to try to find a way to prove his innocence. Skip on a few years and we find this young man, highly adept at mathematics, proving his genius as he manages to get into the Ivy League thanks to some sponsorship from his prep school but again, he is constantly striving to find a way to extricate his dad from jail. It's his skills at chemistry that now serve a different purpose as he and a few colleagues develop a brand new revenue stream that makes him very popular amongst the student body (and mind) whilst raising the cash to fund his dad's appeal. Meantime, with their community gradually falling to wrack and ruin, he also hits on the idea of using some of his cash to kick-start refurbishment works on over 170 homes that have been abandoned or foreclosed upon to revitalise his community - but when the sub-prime crash hits the world it leaves him desperately exposed in more ways than one. When we get to the end of this film, it does make you look back and think a little about how society can contrive to thwart people with even the slightest degree of social ambition - even when is appears to be eminently commercially viable, but the problem here is that there's just way too much missing from the narrative. We skip ahead when we ought to be developing his character his situation. There is virtually nothing from the trial that convicted his father, for example. Peace is clearly a decent man of idealism, reduced to using the tools at his disposal to funds things way more permanent than a flashy car or some bling for his girl (Camilla Cabello) but again the storytelling leaves us to make too many assumptions about who did what back when and about his own, ostensibly victimless, crimes that risk compromising his long sought goals. Interestingly, this isn't a film that takes much of a racial stance. His colour seems not to have been especially relevant as his education progressed but in the end it was maybe just a short story that's undercooked here and skirts over too many of the issues it needed to fulfil it's promise. It's still worth a watch, but the telly will suit it fine.