Free State of Jones

If you think a thick, juicy slab of Civil War history cant be boiled down to 145 minutes of speechifying, stultifying cinema, then grab a seat at Free State of Jones. Like the worst civics lesson, this movie bores away at you till your reactions are dulled.

Matthew McConaughey, sucked dry of his usual acting panache, plays Newton Knight, a real-life Mississippi farmer and army nurse who rebelled against the Confederacy with a militia of fellow deserters and renegade slaves. Everybody is just somebody elses n***er, he tells his ragtag troops. A new law declares that that anyone who owns 20 slaves can avoid military service, bolstering Newts claim that this is a poor mans fighting a rich mans war. After Newts possessions are seized and his wife Serena (Keri Russell) takes off in terror, Newt runs for the swamps and starts fomenting a revolution that will declare Jones county a state and free its citizens of allegiance to North or South.

Its a tall order and a potentially exciting one that writer-director Gary Ross (Seabiscuit, Pleasantville, the first Hunger Games) dripples away with historical footnotes that break the cardinal rule of drama: show, dont tell. Even when Newt takes house slave Rachel (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) as his common-law wife and frees another slave, Moses (Mahershala Ali), from his shackles to develop his powers as a leader, Newt remains outsider his own story, another in a long line of Hollywoods white saviors. What is this dude really thinking? What are the flaws in his character? Where is his secret heart?

20 Best Matthew McConaughey Performances'Fight Club' at 20: The Twisted Joys of David Fincher's Toxic-Masculinity Sucker PunchNeil Young's Essential Albums

Not in this movie. Free State of Jones keeps flashing forward to a future where black lives still dont matter. After the Civil War ends, freed slaves are still bought and sold but this time under the category of apprentice. The Ku Klux Klan is born to enforce inherent racism. In 1940, Newt and Rachels great-grandson is jailed for marrying a white woman.

We get the point, but that doesnt stop Ross from hammering it again and again and without the passion that would make it come alive onscreen. Free State of Jones needed to blow the dust off history so that it stings for the here and now. What we get is a droning sermon that sacrifices urgent immediacy for moral rectitude. Damn shame.