‘Emperor’ Review: A Sterile, Messy Historical Drama
A break out lead performance and a solid supporting cast couldn’t help the film choose a direction.
Historical dramas depicting slavery and the American Civil War , have been an intermittent staple of cinema for as long as the medium has existed. Virtually all of these films choose to tell a story about one or the other; films about slavery are generally set in the years or decades before the War, and seldom attempt to carry their narratives into the War itself; films about the War sometimes provide a commentary on slavery, the latter being one of the core reasons the War was fought, but often focus more on the fighting of the War and its ramifications. It is unquestionable that the two events are intrinsically tied, yet they also unfolded in such different ways that simultaneously portraying both seems a fool’s errand.
Director Mark Amin, making his feature directorial debut after decades of work as a producer of independent projects - attempts to break this mold with "Emperor". In a lean 95 minutes, Amin frames the final months of 1859 - immediately before the election of Abraham Lincoln and the start of the War - around escaped slave Shields Green (Dayo Okeniyi), following him from the final days of his captivity in South Carolina, all the way to his involvement in the infamous raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia alongside John Brown (James Cromwell); an event largely considered to be one of the War’s inciting incidents. The end result is a disappointingly unfocused story that barely skims any side of its narrative, and as a consequence, fails to make any of it captivating.
Amin begins at the Harpers Ferry raid itself, before jumping back in time to a rapid-fire succession of Green’s experiences as a slave that plays almost like a Hallmark film version of “12 Years a Slave”: Green is intelligent, well-liked by his benevolent owner, and productive; said owner is forced to surrender Green to a much more malevolent owner (played by M.C. Gainey). Green and his family are abused by the new owner; Green takes action and escapes. There are two distinct, but related problems with these first 25 minutes: no individual moment is allowed to breathe, denying the audience any opportunity to bond with Green’s family or even confront the horrors of what they are witnessing; and Amin shies away from directly portraying any of these atrocities, neutering any potential commentary, instead creating a sterile and safe portrayal of slavery that plays especially poorly in the social climate of late 2020. This is all right before the overblown, over-dramatized escape sequence breaks suspension of disbelief, in the first of three instances where the film suddenly turns into an action thriller.
It’s also right around this point that Amin’s inexperience as a director begins to distract from the film itself: a nauseating number of dissolves poorly disguise a clear lack of coverage in some scenes, and there’s no distinctive sense of style, with nearly every scene being shot in a very workmanlike-at-best, amateurish-at-worst way that makes much of the film dry and forgettable. The one exception is the tension Amin manages to eke out of a moment where Green submerges himself in a river at night in order to elude slave catchers; as he struggles to hold his breath, he also avoids by mere inches the feet of two men who are fording the river.
However, at the conclusion of this sequence, the film first capitalizes on its greatest strength: Dayo Okeniyi absolutely commits himself to Shields Green, delivering outstanding work even during times when everyone else on set seems to be asleep at the wheel. After he escapes the river, Green suffers a sorrowful breakdown, portrayed with great sincerity by Okeniyi. Surprisingly, the performance is even allowed to play out by Amin, in stark contrast to his quickly cutting away from virtually all other moments of importance. Okeniyi’s career to date has been largely defined by under-the-radar supporting work, such as his role in “The Hunger Games”; he breaks free of that here, proving himself as both a leading man and a thoroughly talented actor. A better film would likely serve as a gateway for him to more prestigious work; hopefully, “Emperor” can still serve at least as some sort of thesis statement on Okeniyi’s promise as an actor if nothing else.
Out of the rest of the cast, Cromwell is the only other performer to make a real impact. However, this has nothing to do with anything Cromwell does with the role, but rather because of the star power he carries with himself as a beloved master of his craft. Cromwell is probably miscast here, he and Bruce Dern become distracting next to a cast made predominantly of relatively new performers, his presence almost hijacking the film from Okeniyi. This is apropos to the way in which the film scrambles its narrative and tone, as if it were uncertain of what - or whose - story it wanted to tell.
This problem is personified in the de facto main villain of “Emperor”, bounty hunter Luke McCabe (Ben Robson), who enters the film in a failed attempt at black comedy that plays like a cutting room floor scene from “Django Unchained”; most of the other scenes that feature McCabe similarly feel like they were ripped out of a different film, none more so than the final confrontation between Green and McCabe in a church bell tower. This scene not only features one of the worst 10-second long sequences of green screen work and editing in recent memory, but completely derails any chance “Emperor” had of sticking the landing, as it instigates another rapid-fire mess in the form of its historical fantasy finale, rushing out the door as if no one - not even Amin - could be bothered with it anymore.
Ultimately, “Emperor” could have been one of a few things: a good film about the horrors of slavery; perhaps even an interesting examination of what the process and journey were like for a man escaping slavery; or, finally, the film could even have centered more around a controversial but pivotal event in American history by diving deeper into the raid on Harpers Ferry by John Brown. Unfortunately, because it tries to do all three things at once, “Emperor” spreads itself too thin to portray any one of them in an interesting or memorable way, leaving audiences with little to attach themselves to outside of Dayo Okeniyi’s captivating, but wasted, lead performance.