Not long into Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Rob Peace, the eponymous character (Chance K. Smith) is sent to private school in a pre-emptive effort by his mother (Mary J. Blige) to keep him from the fate that often strands people of color in urban environments like Newark. Rob stands in front of the foreboding red bricks of his new school, as his new headmaster, Fr. Edwin Leahy (Michael Kelly), asks a group of Black teenagers, “What’s the most important thing you will learn here?” A few of the boys answer, but only Rob gets it right: brotherhood.
It’s the school’s most crucial lesson, etched on a plaque that you see the second you walk through the doors: “Whatever hurts my brother hurts me.” It’s chanted during morning convocation, where every student in the school gathers to take attendance, pray, and share the news as a community. And...
It’s the school’s most crucial lesson, etched on a plaque that you see the second you walk through the doors: “Whatever hurts my brother hurts me.” It’s chanted during morning convocation, where every student in the school gathers to take attendance, pray, and share the news as a community. And...
- 1/26/2024
- by Justin Clark
- Slant Magazine
In his feature directorial debut, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, Chiwetel Ejiofor crafted a humanizing portrait of a gifted Malawian boy who saves his village from famine by building a DIY windmill. That film — based on the true story of inventor William Kamkwamna — leaned into the conventions of inspirational movies to shape a narrative steeped in good-natured earnestness. But it also teased a portrayal of the complicated relationships between fathers and sons.
Ejiofor revisits this theme more forcefully in his latest directorial effort, Rob Peace, about a young man torn between the promise of his future and the responsibilities of his past. Adapted from Jeff Hobbs’ 2014 book The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, the film offers a sweeping and empathetic depiction of its central character. Through Peace’s story, Ejiofor explores the violent impact of the carceral state and the fraught interdependence of a father and his son.
Ejiofor revisits this theme more forcefully in his latest directorial effort, Rob Peace, about a young man torn between the promise of his future and the responsibilities of his past. Adapted from Jeff Hobbs’ 2014 book The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, the film offers a sweeping and empathetic depiction of its central character. Through Peace’s story, Ejiofor explores the violent impact of the carceral state and the fraught interdependence of a father and his son.
- 1/23/2024
- by Lovia Gyarkye
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
“Rob Peace,” Chiwetel Ejiofor’s second feature film as a director and an adaptation of Jeff Hobbs’ bestselling biography “The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace,” starts with a powerful enough image: a literal house on fire. It’s the house that once belonged to the Peace family, now charred on the inside and sitting vacantly in an East Orange, New Jersey neighborhood. The image is one Ejiofor returns to in this film about the lifelong institutional failures that led to the murder of promising Black Yale graduate Robert Peace in 2011 at the age of 30, and during an American financial crisis. Earnestly told and intelligently acted by “Tulsa King” breakout Jay Will in his first major film role, “Rob Peace” still suffers from the usual biographical drama cliches, confused cutting, and an often too blunt script that flattens the majority of the film’s surrounding ensemble into background noise.
- 1/22/2024
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
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