12 years a slave review

12 years a slave was one of 2014's biggest movies in terms of box office revenue ($188.7 million). The film was made to give the wide American public, many of whom have not been fully educated in detail about the brutality of their history, an idea about what their ancestors did or went through.

The cast of the film is star studded, which was the only way this movie would have worked in my opinion. Big names such as Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Fassbender were drafted in to give this film the awareness it needed, without big stars, a film about slavery may not have been successful.

However, from watching the movie for the third time, I have noticed that the film focuses far too much on the brutality of slavery, the overuse of the whip is noticeable. On numerous occasions, we see slaves being whipped. Many who watch the movie are aware of how brutal slavery was towards those enslaved, we don't need to see how brutal it was, because we already know how bad it was. In terms of its brutality, i'm surprised the movie is only rated a '15'. The scene where Epps (Fassbender) forces Solomon to whip Patsie is brutal, more so when Epps takes it upon himself to do it himself. Its unnecessarily brutal, I understand there is an emotional attachment to Patsie which is trying to get the audience to feel sorry for her, as if they weren't already feeling sorry for her. Another unnecessarily brutal scene is the scene where Solomon is kidnapped and is being brutally assaulted and beaten for claiming he is a free man. Again, it is overly brutal, I understand the point being made about him needing to feel scared about those who have kidnapped him, but I don't understand the need for the scene to go on as long as it does.

One other part of the film has had me surprised was the over use of the 'n' word. I understand then it was a common word to use, but in a movie adaptation that may have some scenes shown to children in schools for history lessons, do we really need to repeatedly here that word used? It will get to the point where some children will call their friends by that word, which would spell trouble. I made a tally chart of every time I heard the word used; 52 by my counts, however it could have been more, I think I missed at least 15 more occasions.

Many who have reviewed the film have reviewed it for entertainment purposes, and on that front, the movie is fantastic, I would recommend it to anyone who hasn't already seen it. However for the third time watching it through, I was more focused on the historical accuracy of the movie, and in that sense, some sections of it are a little off. Take the ending for example, there is no way Solomon could have walked away a free many with no type of backlash. Epps hardly put up a fight to keep him which surprised me a little bit. Anothet example is that I feel that Ford (Cumberbatch) was almost too nice towards his slaves. There was no examples of every day slave life, only scenes of violence and gut wrenching scenes of Solomon crying, that is what made up the majority of the film, and on that front, I would suggest the movie struggled in its quest to be informative and accurate, in terms of entertainment, the film is brilliant, it's just finding the middle ground between the two. Steve Mcqueen deserves a lot of praise for this brilliant piece of work.