Free State Of Jones Is As Tedious As It Is Sprawling

All good things must come to an end and that includes Matthew McConaughey's recent resurgence as a leading man. Starting with The Lincoln Lawyer in March 2011, McConaughey has had a streak of unique and high quality films like Mud and Magic Mike to appear in that showed new facets of what he could bring to the table as an actor. This past June brought out his newest starring vehicle, Free State Of Jones, which landed with a thud and quickly vanished without a trace from movie theaters across the globe. Having finally caught up with it, it's not exactly a shocker it had such a short theatrical life.

Free State Of Jones is yet another one of these historical biopics based on real life people that makes the fatal mistake of trying to cram in too much from a non-fictional individuals life into one movie. This time around, the real life figure being adapted for the silver screen is Newton Knight (Matthew McConaughey). Free State Of Jones follows Newton Knight through so many different events in his life, yet, in a contradictory twist of fate, very little is actually explored in this man despite all the events transpiring. The screenplay by Gary Ross (who also directs) is so busy making sure so many parts of Newton's life are shoved in here that there's no opportunity for breathing room for both the audience and protagonist to fully take in what's transpiring.

Supposedly big emotional benchmarks in Newton's life just sort of come and go without much in the way of fanfare. How do these events affect him, how do they help him grow as a person? I got no idea beyond the fact that McConaughey just keeps making a scowl whenever times get rough. As a byproduct of trying to do so much the space of one story, very little is actually accomplished to make the multitude of events that occur in Free State Of Jones actually register in the slightest. Plus, there's a weirdly extraneous subplot that flashes forward to a 1950's trial looking to incriminate a descendant of Newton Knight's for interracial marriage. These segments come and go in such a bizarre fashion that it feels like they don't belong at all into the 19th century set story. It's all just more extraneous padding that further demonstrates how this movies scripts desire to depict every event ever loosely associated with its lead character far exceeds its desire to make any of its depiction of said event dramatically interesting.

As if that all weren't damning enough, all of these events in the script are executed in a visually flat uninteresting way in the movie itself. Why on Earth Free State Of Jones main visual inspiration seems to be the historical recreation segments in History Channel documentaries is beyond me, but it all looks incredibly cheap. Scenes of combat, which were already gonna have an uphill battle in terms of actually working thanks to the characters being so thinly sketched, look like they were shot for nickels and dimes at best. Plus, many of these scenes are given a murky grey overcoat in the color grading department, which really just makes everything seem so visually appealing. There's a similar amateur quality to plenty of other aspects of the film, namely the lethargic editing that robs any scene of potential energy. How a movie with plenty of professional actors and behind-the-scenes talent at its disposal looked this poorly together truly is beyond my grasp.

Mahershala Ali and Gugu Mbatha-Raw are on hand for thankless supporting roles that keep fading in and out of the movie, which feels like such a waste of these two particular actor. Ali's character particularly feels like he's chock full of unfulfilled dramatic potential since he has a backstory involving his wife and child being separated from him that feels way more interesting than the actual plot of Free State Of Jones. Instead, we're stuck with a seriously plodding depiction of the life of Newton Knight that had me checking my watch far more than it had me enraptured in the story it was trying to tell.

Most of Free State Of Jones is pretty much the most basic definition of tedious, but there is one scene so disastrous in its execution that I'm sincerely shocked it hasn't gotten more attention. Maybe people already nodded off well before this scene arrived a little over an hour into Free State Of Jones, but there's this monologue delivered by Matthew McConaughey while his character presides over a funeral centered around the concept that "Everybody Is Somebody's [N-Word]". It's presented in this 110% serious manner both in the way its visually presented and in the manner in which McConaughey delivers it vocally, but good God, it's such a tone-deaf moment that manages to be the sole scene where Free State Of Jones incompotence becomes entertaining (in the sense that you can't tear your eyes away from the disaster happening before your very eyes kind of way). The rest of its boring, but sweet Jesus, that is a somber sequence that I cannot believe any rational human being thought was gonna work.