While looking through Redbox’s offerings I saw this again and here’s what I wish they’d done with it…
At the beginning of the movie main character and his family are in the general store. Another black man wanders in, obviously shouldn’t be there—why? He was a slave? Because a white man shows up and leads him out. Main character shows no consternation or even mixed feelings. Instead, he goes back to what he was doing, shopping with his family.
At the end of the movie when his nightmare is over he tries to sue the guys who sold him but can’t. Then he spends years (?) pursuing some kind of criminal case, I think. Can’t remember the outcome of that but this was tagged on at the very end. I wish they had started with this, followed by the store scene and onward, but interspersed with his “current” struggle for justice. The story has flash-backs anyway so I don’t see how this would have been difficult to do.
Anyway, the movie was powerful and I know it won the Oscar but it seems to me that if it had been told within the context of what he was trying to achieve it would have been empowering, too. Thoughts?