12 Years A Slave

12 Years A Slave tells the true story of Soloman Northup, a Black Free Man in 1840's New York who is kidnapped and sold into slavery.

It deals with some very difficult themes, and as such this is not an easy watch, it contains some fairly graphic scenes of slaves being beaten and tortured. Regular readers of my blog will know I don't like gratuitous violence and blood, but in this film it is a part of the reality of life as a slave, and as such it is entirely justified, and the film would be lacking something without it.

I think Steve McQueen has done an excellent job here, although for me the film did drag a little, as the storyline seems to plod along at quite a pedestrian pace. I was also a little confused by the choice of opening scene before the titles, sometimes films start with the end, then explain how we got to that point, this film seems to have picked a random scene from about halfway through.

My real issue with this film is the advertising, the likes of Brad Pitt, Benedict Cumberbatch and Paul Giamatti barely feature for more than about 10 minutes each, yet they were the names on the posters and trailers, even Alfie Woddard who is on the screen for a total of about 2 minutes got a mention in the trailer, yet there are non star names who feature a whole lot more who barely get a mention. I appreciate that it is star names that sell a film, but it just seemed to be out of perspective.

This is an excellent film, with a wonderful lead performance by Chiwetel Ejiofor, and has quite rightly been nominated for several Golden Globes and Baftas, and no doubt will feature heavily in the Oscar Nominations in what is going to be a very competitive year 9/10