THB# 267: Emancipation

It’s a very awkward thing to review a bad movie about a subject that is very serious and should be given complete respect by us all.

However… I have to do my job.

Will Smith and his drama with The Academy is completely off the table in this discussion today. It would be problematic for me if the movie was great and my feeling that he has not been contrite in a real way and is trying to drop this film into the Oscar race too soon after The Slap. But the movie, unfortunately, has solved this problem for me.

I like Antoine Fuqua personally and professionally. I have been a cheerleader for Will Smith’s superstardom in those years when it was dominant and others minimized it. I think Smith is a good actor as well as a movie star and that he has given some great performances. Ben Foster is incapable of giving a bad performance, no matter what the script is throwing at him.

But busy screenwriter Bill Collage has had 7 feature screenplays that he is credited with and not a single one of them is …