The Big Picture
- Chiwetel Ejiofor excels in directing actors, but struggles with storytelling.
- Though the true story is compelling, the film’s narrative feels like a PowerPoint presentation.
- A mawkish score hinders the emotional impact, making the film entirely predictable and didactic.
Author Jeff Hobbs wrote about his Yale University roommate of four years in the 2014 biography The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League. It chronicled the true story of an exceptional student who defied the odds to transcend his impoverished background yet still couldn’t overcome the gravitational pull of a certain fate the book title alluded to. The bestseller now serves as the basis of Chiwetel Ejiofor’s sophomore directorial outing, Rob Peace, following the similarly real-life-based 2019 Netflix film The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. Many of the praises and criticisms conferred on his directorial debut still apply. He is adroit with directing actors, but his storytelling is pedestrian.
A politically charged montage in the opening, featuring imagery of police brutality and a neighborhood engulfed in flames, all accompanied by Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five’s “The Message,” signals the film’s scope and ambition. While it delivers on that premise, it does so with the approach of an after-school special.
What Is ‘Rob Peace’ About?
We first meet Robert DeShaun Peace (Jelani Dacres) in 1980’s East Orange, N.J., at age 7. His dad, Skeet Douglas (Ejiofor), deadbeat and manipulative, accuses him of farting and ejects him from a car. But it turns out that the old man needs to retrieve a gun from the glove compartment and simply doesn’t want the boy there when he does it. See, Skeet can be both considerate and traumatizing to his son. In the very next scene, he receives a life sentence for double murder.
DeShaun’s mother, Jackie (Mary J. Blige), sees his brilliant mind as a ticket out of the hell hole that is Newark, and resolves to send him to St. Benedict’s Prep School in three years. She tells him to go by the name Robert to avoid association with his convict dad; everyone around knows Skeet has a son named DeShaun. Even as the teenage Rob (Chance K. Smith) thrives academically and excels in water polo, he is preoccupied with securing Skeet’s release. He works multiple jobs on top of school to raise funds for an appeal. As Yale-bound Rob (Jay Will) leaves Newark, Skeet remains very much on his mind even if he’s worried about his roommate accidentally answering a collect call from prison. Skeet grows increasingly impatient, inadvertently steering Rob to take desperate measures – selling pot on campus – to raise money for the lawyer’s retainer.
The story exposes the structural racism, exemplified in botched legal and economic systems, that can overwhelmingly oppress a people. While it’s largely sympathetic to the characters’ ordeals, it also holds them accountable for their choices. Skeet is shown as selfish, prioritizing his own freedom over Rob’s future. Rob chooses to cut corners even when there are legitimate alternatives to raise funds.
‘Rob Peace’ Proves Ejiofor Is an Actors’ Director
Ejiofor’s strength as a filmmaker is clearly working with the performers, from young actors playing Rob at different ages to the outstanding supporting cast that includes Mare Winningham as a Yale professor. Dialogues embedded with molecular biophysics and biochemistry terminologies are delivered with the cadence of casual conversation, without any trace of inauthenticity. Even the bit roles are handled with unusual care, truly cementing Ejiofor as an actors’ director.
That said, Will’s voiceover narration throughout is inexplicably static and unemotive. It shows that storytelling is what Ejiofor struggles with. The actor-turned-writer-director is hyper-attuned to cultural currents but lacks the finesse to bring them to bear. The voiceover narration seems to approximate Scorsese, but neither Ejiofor’s direction nor Will’s delivery possesses the requisite panache.
Ejiofor’s thoughtful observations on Rob’s circumstances are scattered throughout. Anecdotes of microaggressions reveal how, upon arriving at Yale, his presence as a budding scholar is immediately questioned. One time while approaching the campus security entrance, he asks a fellow student who has just unlocked the gate to hold it open for him. Ordinarily a simple accommodation not requiring a second thought, in this instance Rob’s identification is demanded. Similarly, a graduate student happening upon Rob doing research in a lab wants him to state his business. Conversely, nobody bats an eye when Rob assumes the role of resident dope dealer. Rob’s girlfriend, Naya (Camila Cabello), points out this unconscious bias prevalent on campus, the delineation of acceptable roles and stereotypes for Black people. She is absolutely right of course, but you’d wish this didn’t need to be spelled out to the audience so heavy-handedly.
‘Rob Peace’ Plays Like a PowerPoint Presentation of a Film
More often than not, Ejiofor bullet points the unfolding events rather than coalescing them into a dramatic arc. Structurally, the narrative is comparable to a PowerPoint presentation. The film covers Rob’s childhood in Newark to his arrival in New Haven, Conn., in exactly half an hour. He enters his junior year at Yale at precisely the one-hour mark. Storytelling shouldn’t be reduced to such a rote formula.
The most glaring flaw has to be Jeff Russo‘s mawkish score. A conscious choice has been made with the film’s title to excise the spoiler-y parts in Hobbs’ book title, but Russo’s score basically serves the same function. The music imbues an overall sense of dread. It is unbearably hokum; instead of showing respect to the real-life people or subtly foreshadowing the tragedy, it mostly browbeats the audience into feeling bad. The end result is insufferably predictable and didactic. Even the occasional Layzie Bone and Ludacris on the soundtrack doesn’t liven things up in the slightest. Yes, Peace had a tough life, but he also had hard-fought wins worth celebrating.
REVIEW
Rob Peace
Rob Peace has elements of a compelling true story at its core, but the execution of how it comes together doesn’t do right by them.
- The cast does a good job of bring the story to life as Ejiofor proves to be a actors’ director.
- The film offers perceptive insights on the cultural forces behind the real-life events.
Rob Peace comes to theaters in U.S. theaters on August 16. Click below for showtimes near you.
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