This film uses every cliché in the book starting with the liberal minded white person who is the voice of conscience and the long suffering good hearted but somewhat simplistic black people.This film is emotionally manipulative and panders to a sentimental reduction of complex history. Its moves were predictable and uses every trick in the book, even the scene in the church is cliché. Both the white and the black characters are mostly reductive caricatures out of some story book world which doesn't do justice to the historical complexity of such situations. Why would you want to make a saccharine comic book out of profound historical situations-- other than to pander to audiences longing for a feel good experience for the sake of box office. I actually don't mean to disrespect to people who like it, and I don't want to attack the actors. They didn't write the film, but at the same time, I can't believe that so many people fell for this bag of tricks. Still, a bigger problem and disservice a movie like this does to our culture is that such bad history and simplistic human portrayals turns race dynamics into good guy bad guy stories which we can watch with a complacent feeling of how much better we are than those bad old days. Such complacency leads to a historical ignorance that retards honest critique and real progress. This movie would be better if it just didn't pretend to be about something. Let it be some sappy comic book. That wouldn't be the worse thing in the world. At least it would be more honest.
