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132 minutes, Apple TV+
3 stars
The story: An 1863 photo of one “Whipped Peter”, his back horrifically mutilated by his overseer’s floggings, galvanised the abolitionist movement during the American Civil War. It is the inspiration behind this fictionalised historical account of a runaway slave played by Will Smith.
The Haitian slave Peter of Emancipation escapes from a dehumanising labour camp in 1860s Louisiana. He is Smith’s first role since the actor’s Academy Award-winning King Richard in 2021, and his most physically demanding as Peter endures alligators, snakes, exhaustion, terror and the hounds of vicious tracker Jim Fassel (Ben Foster) over his 10-day barefoot flight through the swamps towards freedom – and back to his family.
The disembowelled black bodies strewn along the way warn of the fate that awaits recaptured slaves.
There are better pictures on this shameful period in history, notably 12 Years A Slave (2013). And currently available on Amazon Prime Video is the mini-series The Underground Railroad (2021).
Peter’s odyssey is unflinchingly honest in its depiction of savagery and degradation. But it is largely one long, propulsive wilderness survival adventure from Hollywood action director Antoine Fuqua of Training Day (2001) and The Equalizer (2014), shot in an arty desaturated patina.
Fassel relentlessly closes in as if Peter were the only fugitive in the Deep South.
The beady-eyed sadist is a stock villain. And despite Smith’s effortful performance, Peter is also a mere symbolic figure, a hero without inner conflict, unwavering in his goodness and Christian faith.
“I am not a slave,” he declares. “I am a man.” But who, exactly, is Peter?
Hot take: Will Smith suffers mightily for a brutal if not particularly profound chase thriller.
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