Wow that was brutal and I am completely and utterly speechless. I saw this movie almost a week ago and I still can't stop thinking about it. This was by far the best movie of the year and everybody needs to watch it to see the injustice of those times. Anyone can watch and enjoy this movie, although they may not be able to watch the whole thing.
This movie centers around Solomon Northup(Chiwetel Ejiofor) who is a free man that was drugged and sold into slavery while his wife and kids are gone. He is first sold to Ford(Benedict Cumberbatch) who is a bad person because he's a slave owner, but for a slave owner he's okay. He has a second in command played by Seth from Looper who hates Solomon because of how well he is treated. There is not a single bad performance in this movie, even the bit characters who are only in the movie for 10 minutes.
The insane thing about this movie is that all of this happened. It is based off of a book written by Solomon. It is disturbing how little remorse they have for other humans. They don't even consider them people they think of them as property. They will punish and kill them without a second thought because they know they won't be sent to jail, since slaves are considered property. I felt dirty after seeing this but I felt dirty in a very good way.
It's also very well shot, even when there is nothing happening on screen it is still engrossing because of how beautifully done the shot is. I really have only one problem and it doesn't have to do with the movies. It's that behind me there were three of the most obnoxious people I have ever had to watch a movie with. They were talking and laughing during the very intense scenes while everyone else was completely silent, engrossed in this masterpiece of a film. It's a testament to how good this movie is, that near the end of the movie one of them shushed one of the others when they were trying to talk. I will give two of them a pass because they were young, and immature but their dad was also talking and joking around so I won't give him a pass. At one point he practically yells out "what did she do to her" in response to a scene I won't talk about.
This is the best movie of the year so far narrowly beating out Rush. 10/10 the best, most intense movie to come out this year.
Hopefully the Wolf of Wallstreet (my most anticipated movie of the year) is even better than this. Although I'm not sure if anything can outdo this, and that is a really good thing
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