Movie Emperor (2020) shows some of the horrors of slavery, but is otherwise a huge disappointment

Two scenes filled me with rage.

Both involve injustice.

Slavery in itself is a practice that should enrage any human with a shred of empathy and its in depicting the small every day aspects of it that you can have an inkling how bad it must have been.

Other than that the movie is boring, cannot convey any suspense and it’s full of historical inaccuracies.

That’s a pity. One of my students recommended this movie to me and seemed to be convinced he now knew everything about how the Civil War started. He does not.

So this movie is one of those movies responsible for filling people’s heads with bad history.

In general terms the movie sort of manages to show the importance of John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry and shows some of the maddening vulnerability of black slaves in the US, but that’s it.

As an adventure story it completely fails. Too predictable. You have seen a lot of it before. And some of the action scenes are clearly just there to… squeeze in action scenes.

You can skip this one.

12 years a slave is a lot better.