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Movie Review of "12 Years a Slave"

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  • ROGER4314

    Been Called "Flash" Since I Was A Kid!
    Rating - 100%
    1   0   0
    Jul 11, 2009
    10,444
    66
    East Houston
    The movie "12 Years A Slave" came and went quickly at our local theater and I missed it! Recently, it has been nominated for numerous awards so it returned to give us another opportunity to see it.

    Today dawned as a drizzly, gloomy and cold day. My little dog Jake and I have had some cabin fever so I decided to get out, see a flick and enjoy getting out of the house. Jake just got treats, and I got the movie. He won.

    The movie begins in 1841 and features our star who is a free black man living well in the Washington DC area. He is kidnapped by brutal bastards who chain, beat and degrade him in every possible way. More free blacks are kidnapped and finally they're shipped south to be sold. They are a sorry lot who barely survive the journey.

    Without going into detail, the flick shows their life in the southern plantations and the brutal reality of being a slave in the south. It is a violent, disgusting, degrading, hard and joyless life.

    You can fill in the blanks but as is my practice, I'll tell you how this movie made me feel and what I learned.

    I KNOW that slavery was tough. I know life was hard, unjust and the horrors of being taken from your family, sold like property and worked like an animal are all beyond imagination.

    But this was a movie and this is a movie review. So that's what I'll do..............

    Almost every white man was portrayed as a drunken, lying, brutal, cheating, bastard with no morals, ethics, or compassion of any kind.

    Blacks (N word used here) are compassionate, feeling, caring people who looked after each other and tried their best to survive. They had little but shared what they had.

    I suppose that was done to make White American viewers feel guilty for the horrors forced upon African Americans in the pre Civil War South. I won't accept that guilt! My ancestors were in Europe in 1841 and had nothing to do with that mess!

    The color of MY skin was damned in this movie and I got tired of seeing my image being portrayed as total scum. I hated that!

    The reason I go to movies is to see and learn new things. Sometimes, I just want to get out of the house and do something for fun!

    This movie is nearly 2 hours long and almost from the start is the most negative film I have ever seen! This flick is a major bummer and if you are in a great mood, you'll see that evaporate pronto.

    If you like seeing people who look like you, acting as brutally as Human Beings can be, then this is your movie! If you like seeing new methods of torture, disrespect and barbarism, then this is your flick!

    Why would anyone want to pay good money to see a movie that is 99% negative? There's no rooting for the good guys or triumph over adversity here. No one won.........they simply survived. Others did not.

    The end is just like that............OK, the brutal movie is over. What a waste of a powerful story! You will leave the theater numb and glad that it's over.

    This is no "Roots" or "The Color Purple." This movie is sick.

    The movie was well filmed in scenic southern settings. The "N" word is plentiful. I do not use that word and it made me sick to hear so much of it. There was brief nudity and scenes of intercourse. Brutality was the standard from one end of the film to the other. Horrible beatings, lynchings and rape are standard fare.

    I gave the movie a "D". I liked the period costumes, settings, plantations and seeing how people in the 1840's lived.

    If you want entertainment, or something to lift your spirits, do NOT go to see this flick!

    Flash
    Hurley's Gold
     
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    Mike1234567

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    Please name a few white slave owners who weren't scum... abusive users of other human beings. I feel no guilt as I didn't participate in that mess. But I am curious as to where you're really coming from.
     

    breakingcontact

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    Please name a few white slave owners who weren't scum... abusive users of other human beings. I feel no guilt as I didn't participate in that mess. But I am curious as to where you're really coming from.

    The history of slavery in this country isn't as cut and dry as our public school history books has led many to believe.
     

    Mike1234567

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    The history of slavery in this country isn't as cut and dry as our public school history books has led many to believe.

    Yeahh... mmkayy. I thought Texas had more intelligence, heart and common sense. I'm very disappointed... but ya' know... I'm thinking it's just this bigoted forum. I'm thinking I shouldn't have joined this lot. Or maybe the problem is a handful of members alowed to run amok with there ignorant ideals.
     
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    itchin

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    Yeahh... mmkayy. I thought Texas had more intelligence, heart and common sense. I'm very disappointed... but ya' know... I'm thinking it's just this bigoted forum. I'm thinking I shouldn't have joined this lot. Or maybe the problem is a handful of members alowed to run amok with there ignorant ideals.

    Nope. No bigots here. The.problem is you're a douchbag and probably a bigot yourself.
     

    Younggun

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    Yeahh... mmkayy. I thought Texas had more intelligence, heart and common sense. I'm very disappointed... but ya' know... I'm thinking it's just this bigoted forum. I'm thinking I shouldn't have joined this lot. Or maybe the problem is a handful of members alowed to run amok with there ignorant ideals.

    Have you ever done any REAL research about slavery? Not what you are told in school, but actual research? How bout northern immigrant workers like the Irish and Polish?

    Here's an eye opener for you. Salves were not cheap. It's terrible that they were considered property, but how many people you know enjoy buying expensive things just to tear them up? A slave with a broken leg was worthless, a sick slave was worthless, etc, etc.

    On the other hand, immigrant workers had no value. Losing a leg, hand, or life meant nothing to many of their employers. They lived in filthy, diseased, group housing and barely survived.


    Slavery was a terrible thing, but you obviously don't know anything about the true history of slavery in the south, or the north.
     

    ROGER4314

    Been Called "Flash" Since I Was A Kid!
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    Jul 11, 2009
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    East Houston
    Mike I've studied the period before the Civil War and the Civil war is a major interest of mine. The sides were as passionate and as full of shxt as our Liberal anti gun people are today.

    Abolitionists were not above stretching the truth. "Uncle Toms Cabin" by Harriet Beacher Stowe was a major propaganda effort! Northerners would trash the south in a heartbeat....just like they do now over gun control.

    The Civil War was NOT about slavery. That issue came into play long after the fighting began!

    I've traveled all over the south for most of my life and visited the digs of Steven Foster (Camp Town Races, My Old Kentucky Home). That war was about urban, industrial economies against rural, agricultural lives. Slavery was part of that life.

    Mike, think about this................
    Slaves were the most expensive "things" a southern gentleman could own. Buying a slave would be like you saving for a 2014 Corvette. Are you going to take that new Corvette and go trail riding with it? No....you'd take care of it to protect your investment.

    I'm sure there were brutal bastards in the south but I refuse to believe that ALL of the white people were like what was portrayed in the movie. I also refuse to believe that ALL people of any ethnic group are alike.

    This movie was propaganda.

    Flash
     

    Younggun

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    Slavery was and is wrong. What it looked like and who was involved and how varied widely.

    Very true.

    It's tough explaining how much different it was than what we are taught without sounding like you (I or anyone else) are trying to make it "OK".
     

    shortround

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    Roger:

    Excellent review, as always.

    My people moved from Tennessee to East Texas in 1842. They were too damned poor to own slaves. They were simple subsistence farmers and God-Fearing folk.

    The Communist Party USA inspired propaganda about every White Man having been a slave-owner persists to this day. Hence the "White Guilt" that only perpetuates the lie.

    Google Frank Marshall Davis.
     

    ROGER4314

    Been Called "Flash" Since I Was A Kid!
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    Jul 11, 2009
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    I guess that I'm one of the bigots that Mike was referring to.

    I was born and raised in Chicago and was taught the standard spiel of the time that the Civil War was about slavery. Having traveled once or twice per year throughout the deep south, I saw the real deal and even witnessed true 1960's era southern discrimination up close and personal. I never agreed with any of that and knew it was crap!

    Later, I taught for 22 years and helped students of all backgrounds to find a better life. I was color blind and helped all students male or female equally. Two of my female students were named "Top Non Traditional Students" in the State of Oklahoma!

    Now, all of that is wiped clean over a movie review. Bigot.............what a dickwad thing to say!

    Flash
     
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    breakingcontact

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    Free blacks owned slaves. Some slaves held jobs where they made money and bought their freedom. Some had skills, some could read. Some worked side by side with their masters doing the back breaking work. Some masters kept slave families together.

    Yes. Some big plantation owners sat atop their horse and watched a hundred slaves work and raped, beat or killed them at will. That was a reality as well.

    Why cant people admit all of these versions were reality?
     

    BADJUJU

    New Member
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    Jan 7, 2014
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    I think slavery was better than the welfare system we have now.....
    I'm not prepared to go that far, but wouldn't mind seeing the end of welfare myself.


    I seen the movie and actually liked it, I figured it was just that. A movie.
    and like any documentary to be taken w / a grain of salt.


    i thought the movie portrayed some whites in a positive way. Which history shows as well , and depicts the brutality of others.


    He was rescued by whites, friends of whites and was eventually returned to his freedom by whites.
    So I have no problem with highlighting some of the injustices levied by slave owners.


    maybe someday, someone will make a movie (documentary, grain of salt)
    based solely on the whites that cared and wanted an end to slavery.
     

    ROGER4314

    Been Called "Flash" Since I Was A Kid!
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    Jul 11, 2009
    10,444
    66
    East Houston
    He was rescued by whites, friends of whites and was eventually returned to his freedom by whites.

    I thought five minutes at the beginning and five minutes at the end were a disproportionate showing of white people as caring folks compared to about 1 hr and 45 min of being shown as the worst Human scum imaginable. To each his own.

    At the end of the war, many freed slaves stayed on the Plantations. The Blacks had nowhere else to go. The land was worthless without someone to tend it, so former owners and free Blacks worked things out. There was a share cropping arrangement, division of the profits, grants of land for worker use in return for labor and myriads of other solutions. It was NEVER easy for blacks in the south but it wasn't at all like school textbooks taught it.

    Many Blacks took off and went West. One of the great untold stories of the West was about black cowboys. We don't hear a lot about their role in taming of the West.

    All of this is a terrific saga. I think the movie "12 Years a Slave" played the stereotypes to death. Real life wasn't like that even though there WERE some shameful bastards. However, "Nothing is ever always!"

    Flash
     

    Texasjack

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    Jan 3, 2010
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    You cannot impose 21st century values on 19th century history.

    A strong male slave could cost $10,000. That's about $500,000, adjusted for inflation. You think slave owners wanted to risk injuring that much investment?? Yes, slavery is wrong and there were plenty of people against it well before the war. But at the time, cheap labor from Europe (esp. Ireland) was treated far, far worse. Slaves were given places to stay, were fed and clothed, and even got medical care. If an Irish coal miner died on the job, they set his body out of the way until shift change. Unless his family had kids old enough to work (and 5 or 6 years old were not unusual), his family would starve. That coal miner would have to buy the shovel and pick he used in the mine from the mining company. He'd likely have to rent space in one of the company owned houses and, because he had no money, he'd have to buy all his groceries and clothing from the company store - on credit. ("St. Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go, I owe my soul to the company store") Life was hard - damn hard.

    I wouldn't pretend to defend slavery - it can't be done. But movies like this are not historical - they're just hate pieces.
     

    ROGER4314

    Been Called "Flash" Since I Was A Kid!
    Rating - 100%
    1   0   0
    Jul 11, 2009
    10,444
    66
    East Houston
    I thought of something that may lighten things up a bit. In the movie, there were several scenes where the Plantation owner grabbed a rifle and went outside. In those scenes..........there it was...............a Thompson Center Hawken rifle!

    That unmistakable short barrel, big bore is one of my all time favorites! In one scene of a man on horseback, the camera pulled in pretty close. I recognized the Thompson rear sight assembly! That configuration of short barrel and big bore was not even close to what was in style during the 1840's.

    If you see the flick, check it out and confirm or deny....snicker.

    Flash
     
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