Emperor (2020 film)

Emperor
Film poster
Directed by	Mark Amin
Written by	Mark Amin Pat Charles
Produced by	Mark Amin Tyler Boehm Reginald Hudlin Susan Kirr Cami Winikoff
Starring	Dayo Okeniyi James Cromwell Kat Graham Bruce Dern Ben Robson M.C. Gainey Mykelti Williamson
Cinematography	Jeremy Rouse
Edited by	Asaf Eisenberg
Music by	Javier Navarrete
Distributed by	Briarcliff Entertainment (USA)
Release date	18 August 2020 (2020-08-18)
Running time	99 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Emperor is a 2020 American historical drama film directed by Mark Amin, written by Mark Amin and Pat Charles. The film stars Dayo Okeniyi, James Cromwell, Kat Graham, and Bruce Dern.^[1][2] It is based on the true story of an enslaved person, Shields Green, nicknamed Emperor, who escaped to freedom and participated in abolitionist John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry.

The film "announces itself as Civil War history told not by or for the benefit of whites".^[3]

Plot[]

In 1859, after the plantation on which Shields "Emperor" Green works in Charleston, South Carolina, is gambled away by his master, a cruel new overseer tortures Shields and whips his son Tommy. In retaliation, Shields kills the overseer and flees. Shields' wife Sarah is killed during his escape.

Shields evades capture on his way north and learns that a bounty has been placed on his head. His master and neighboring plantation owners hire bounty hunter Luke McCabe to catch him. Shields is found by Truesdale, who gives him refuge in his house despite his wife Delores' objection; however, the next day, Truesdale turns on him and forces Shields to lock himself in a cage, revealing his intention to wait for the bounty hunters to capture Shields for the reward money. Delores kills Truesdale and frees Shields, who takes the responsibility for the latter's murder.

Shields meets up with a young bank robber, Rufus Little. McCabe and his men pursues them and almost catch them up, and Little dies from the injuries in the process. Shields takes his gun and looted money and meets up with Levi Coffin (a real Quaker abolitionist) at his cabin. There, he gives him the money to buy his son's freedom. After McCabe appears, Shields heads to Maryland where meets John Brown and Frederick Douglass, who is preparing the raid at the Harpers Ferry. Shields agrees to join them to fight for the end of the slavery.

Shields, Brown and his men take over Harper's Ferry. United States Army Colonel

Robert E. Lee and his forces retake it and most of Brown's men suffers casualties. As Shields rides away on a horse, McCabe shoots and wounds him. Shields takes refuge at a church, but McCabe and his men track him down. During a gun battle. Shields climbs to the spire, pursued by McCabe, and blows it up as he leaps into a river to make his escape. Coffin buys Tommy's freedom and takes him to Shields. 

In 1890, his son writes his a book about him and takes it to a publisher.

Cast[]

• Dayo Okeniyi as Shields Green
• Naturi Naughton as Sarah Green
• Trayce Malachi as Tommy Green
• Keean Johnson as Rufus Little
• Ben Robson as Luke McCabe
• Bruce Dern as Levi Coffin
• James Cromwell as John Brown
• Harry Lennix as Frederick Douglass
• James Le Gros as Robert E. Lee
• Paul Scheer as Duvane Henderson
• M.C. Gainey as Randolph Stevens
• Nicholas Logan as Gunther Bowman
• Kat Graham as Delores
• Mykelti Williamson as Truesdale
• Brad Carter as Grady
• Samuel Lee Fudge as Henry
• Mark Ashworth as Reverend

Reception[]

Emperor received mixed reviews.

As of October 2020, 77% of the thirteen reviews compiled by Rotten Tomatoes are positive, with an average rating of 6.13/10.^[4]

Glenn Kenny of The New York Times gave a mixed review, praising the lead Okeniyi's acting while finding the plot to be "unimaginative" and the dialogue "tired".^[3]

Martin Thomas of Double Toasted put the film as his #1 worst film of 2020, describing it as poorly written, historically inaccurate.^[5]

On RogerEbert.com, Simon Abrams gave it one star, calling it toothless, insulting, inert, tacky, lousy, and mediocre. "It re-presents a dark period in American history without being inspired or insightful enough to be worth your curiosity or emotional investment."^[1]

Historical accuracy[]

Green had broken speech and was hard to understand; he may have had a speech defect. Douglass described him as "a man of few words". Shields Green actually met both John Brown and Frederick Douglass' at the latter's home in Rochester, New York, where John was visiting and working on his project. We do not know what he was doing as a slave in South Carolina, but that he managed a plantation is very unlikely. In Rochester, living in Douglass' house, he worked as a barber and launderer. Green did not escape from the raid on Harper's Ferry. He was captured, tried, and convicted along with Brown for treason against Virginia, murder, and inciting a slave insurrection, and hanged two weeks after Brown. There is no evidence that Green saw his son again after he left South Carolina, nor that his son wrote a book about him. While the fact that he had a son is documented, that he had "sons" is not. The names of his wife and son are unknown. See Shields Green.

Shields Green and the Gospel of John Brown[]

Shields Green and the Gospel of John Brown is a screenplay by Kevin Willmott and Mitch Brian, which "tells the story of Green, an ex-slave and disciple of Frederick Douglass[,] who accompanied Brown to Harper's Ferry, where he died." In Shields Green, "there's a reluctant leader/hero. It's like The 70's in the sense that there's a kid—Shields Green, in this case—who is running from reality, and he ends up embracing the reality of race and assuming the mantle of leadership. I mean, at first Green only wants to get his family free from slavery, but then he grows into a person who believes that all slaves need to be free."

It was purchased by Chris Columbus for 20th-Century Fox, but was not produced.^[6] The rights have reverted to the authors.

References[]

External links[]

• Emperor at IMDb
• Emperor at Rotten Tomatoes
• Emperor at Metacritic