Will Smith's comeback, Emancipation, reduces a slave narrative to an action film

Will Smith's star vehicle Emancipation is many things.

First off, Emancipation is just that — a star vehicle. It's a route back to the Oscars for an actor more on-the-outs with the public than he's ever been over the course of his three decade-long career.

It's a "based-on-true-events" story of an enslaved man — dubbed "Whipped Peter," though most likely actually named Gordon — whose whip-scarred back was documented in a widely distributed 1800s photograph that helped turn Northern Americans more against the practice of slavery. 

But it's also a movie that might have had its most accurate review written 20 years ago, by a critic talking about an entirely different project. 

"The filmmakers do their best to distract us, but eventually it becomes hard to ignore," Jeff Strickler wrote for the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 2001, "that Behind Enemy Lines is one long chase sequence."

Comparing a slave narrative (stuffed with stylistic choices that seem to be aimed straight at award voters' ballot cards) with an Owen Wilson-led action/adventure (that holds an average Rotten Tomatoes score below most direct-to-DVD releases) might seem unrelated, but it isn't.

WATCH | Emancipation trailer: 

First, the filmmaking. While Behind Enemy Lines used the classic blue/grey filter to key audiences into the fact the hostile territory their hero is running through is Eastern Europe, Emancipation slightly changes the formula. Director Antoine Fuqua instead opts for a de-saturated colour scheme a hair's-breadth away from black-and-white to virtually yell that the movie takes place in a gritty past, and one far less humane than our present.

And really, that's the only real revelation Emancipation has to offer about slavery in the 1860s South: it was horrible, disgusting and degrading.

We follow Smith as Peter as he witnesses and suffers through all the horrors associated with that time period. We see whippings. We see brandings. We see unnamed bodies dumped into a pit, covered in lye and burned. We see shootings. We see beatings. We see families ripped apart, and we see — in the middle of the frame, from an unwavering camera, without a cutaway — a man ripped apart by dogs.

All this happens as Smith's often silent Peter stoically runs across Louisiana wetland — pursued by Ben Foster (Hell or High Water, Leave No Trace) as the equally impassive overseer and slave-catcher Jim Fassel.

The acting can't be faulted here: Foster, Smith and notably Charmaine Bingwa, who plays Peter's wife Dodienne, give grim and harrowing performances full of heartache and strife. Smith is even somewhat refreshing: instead of leaning on the charm and wit that got him famous, he strips away all artifice to embody a deeply religious man grappling with his faith in a society and culture set against him. 

It's a performance that, on the surface, is perfect to get him back in the good graces of fans and Oscars organizers after he infamously slapped Chris Rock at the ceremony earlier this year. It's humble, stripped down and focused on the persecution of a self-possessed hero rallying against seemingly insurmountable odds —  a recipe for success on the awards circuit. 

But instead, Smith's quiet acting job doesn't belie anything under the movie's surface. Like Behind Enemy Lines, Emancipation works like a clip show of distractions to keep you from the realization there's not much being said. The overwhelming majority of the movie is spent following Peter as he runs toward freedom, turning him into little more than an avatar for the audience (like how Wilson leads audiences to and through explosions and shoot-outs) to witness torture and violence.