MOVIE REVIEW
“Free State of Jones”
Grade: C+
Starring Matthew McConaughey, Keri Russell and Mahershala Ali. Directed by Gary Ross.
Rated R for brutal battle scenes and disturbing graphic images. Check listings for theaters. 2 hours, 19 minutes.
Bottom line: A Civil War film that's just interesting enough that you wish it were better
In so many Civil War-era photographs, a bone-weariness of spirit, coupled with a kind of faraway intensity, lurks in the soldiers’ eyes. Plenty of actors can fake that sort of thing, but Matthew McConaughey really does have it. He looks right and convincing in a period drama such as “Free State of Jones,” the historical biography, equal parts intrigue and frustration, written and directed by Gary Ross.
McConaughey plays Newton Knight, like Oskar Schindler an anomaly in a horrific time and place. Knight, a pro-Union Mississippi native, marshaled a guerrilla war against his own side, the Confederates, with troops (as many as 500) including deserters and runaway slaves alike.
He fathered five children in his common-law marriage to a former slave and nine more with his wife. Both families shared the same 160-acre farm. Progressive hero or backwoods disgrace? The arguments, according to the Smithsonian piece and half-dozen books on Knight’s life, continue to this day. Even if you carve Knight’s rich personal life out of a cinematic retelling (which would be pretty stupid), you’d still have a rebel who, in 1864, managed to prevail over the Confederates in Jones County, Miss., and declare the county the Free State of Jones. That is highly promising movie material.
As the film begins, Knight scrambles across battlefields as a Confederate medic; soon his eyes are fully opened to the war’s costs, and the way it grinds through white and black lives. Ross’ script, the unwieldy result of what appears to have been a rabbit hole of historical research, deftly sets up Knight’s moral awakening. In an early scene, a nephew of Knight’s is killed on the battlefield, just before he deserts. Soon Knight himself turns his back on the war, and his guns against it.
In another early scene Knight breaks the terrifying neck-shackle loose from the formerly enslaved Moses Washington (Mahershala Ali). In the Reconstruction-era sequences, “Free State of Jones” turns much of its attention to Moses and his efforts to register voters among newly freed slaves.
Ross is a filmmaker (he did well with the first “Hunger Games,” among others) of considerable taste, but often in “Free State of Jones” we feel like visitors to a historical re-enactment site. From camera composition to production design, everything looks and feels fresh-scrubbed and somewhat staid, and you don’t quite believe what you’re seeing.
At such times the movie threatens to turn its protagonist into a male version of Katniss Everdeen, glamorous, indominable leader of the rebellion. McConaughey is too wily and skillful an actor to falsify his end of the bargain. Ross’ smooth, steady film is just interesting enough to make you wish it were a lot grittier, and better.
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