"Emancipation" is directed by Antoine Fuqua, known for his hard-edged, muscular action movies.
The film attempts to have the veneer of an emotional historical drama.
It ends up making Peter into an action hero at the center of an on-the-run chase movie.
Many of these sequences are accompanied by a dizzying, ever-moving camera drone.
The film makes you consider why Fuqua puts the life of this Black man on line so often.
Last third of the film transforms into a Civil War battle epic.
"Emancipation" has moments of inspiration but often finds itself lost in what kind of film it is trying to be.
It wants to be "12 Years a Slave," but falls more in line with the genre conventions of Tarantino's film.
Some scenes work, but they don't add up to a satisfying whole.