This is what I wrote on a thread shortly after I'd seen it
I saw it a couple of days ago and I didn't like it. I couldn't connect with any of the characters much because they were all so thinly written. Mr Epps was probably the strongest and even he was a bit pantomime villain at times. I felt disconnected from what was happening on screen because the characterisation was too simplistic. Horrible and distressing story lines not compensate for lack of writing. There was interesting stories to be told, which weren't told (Patsey, the woman on the boat whose family was split, Mrs Epps, the non speaking extra slaves).
There was a lot of what slavery was, in the Deep South, at that point in history, and not enough of either the actual story that was supposed to be told or any of the surrounding stories.
I think it could have been an excellent TV series but beyond the scope of a film. Part of the problem, I imagine, is that part of his coping mechanism was to shut down, which doesn't make for good storytelling.
I think it is 'important' and 'powerful' in the sense of it shows, graphically, what slavery is and reminds us that we are standing on broken backs, but I don't think it was a well written film that told a story well and Brad Pitt was almost as shit as he was in Inglorious Bastards
...at the end it just popped up about him trying to get justice against the kidnappers and slave pen owners and not being able to because of not being able to give evidence against a white man, and about his abolition work and running underground escape routes but all of that was left out in preference to a sort of Slavery 101 lesson teaching us what slavery is but never advancing to what it means or what it does or it's legacy. There was more to the story than was told. Why was he such a hot shot in the beginning? Why was the shopkeeper fawning on him? Why did that slack-jawed kid run in the shop to gawp at him?
He was obviously an incredible man but that is hard to portray if you concentrate solely on he period in his life when he tried to keep his head down.
I think that there were some very well done/powerfully filmed shots but overall I was left thinking I should 'like' it because the subject matter is so important and it's a true story of almost unimaginable evil but I just couldn't connect to it at all. I actually think what messed it up for me was the first 5 min when he was the fashionable man about town - it was clumsy and amateurish scene setting and didn't fit with the gravitas of the rest of the film.