Deadwyler is an immovable force in ’40 Acres’
You gotta love the cleverness of the conceit at play in “40 Acres,” a post-apocalyptic actioner in which an indigenous man and his Black wife are under siege by crazed white cannibals who want to take everything, including their lives and those of their family. It springs from the minds of rookie director R.T. Thorne and his co-writer, Glenn Taylor, who’ve both embraced and twisted the genre’s tropes to create a film that concisely makes its points without overtaxing the metaphor.
Even better, they’ve cast the incomparable Danielle Deadwyler (“Till”) as the heroine of a harrowing story in which she is allowed to showcase her badassery, motivated by a quiet rage. She has no beef with the folks outside her heavily fortified farm, but if you dare step on her property, you’d best get off her lawn – pronto. Just ask the dozen or so folks who breach the perimeter in the film’s attention-grabbing opening and wind up supine in pools of their own blood.
The Waltons, this is not. It’s more of a family that slays together, stays together. And Deadwyler’s Hailey Freeman has schooled her large brood well in the fineries of self-defense, lessons the Canadian herself learned in her former life as a U.S. soldier. You do what Mama says, or you’ll find yourself dropping and giving her twenty. Hooah!
She’s the “bad cop” in this clan while her far more jovial husband, Gelan (a terrific Michael Greyeyes), is the proverbial “good cop,” who’s content to sit back and smile as his kids, roughly ages 7 to 18, endure a non-stop boot camp intended to whip their bodies and minds into tip-top shape. And when that’s done, they’ve got their farm chores to contend with. No wonder Hailey’s eldest, Emanuel (Kataem O’Connor), is in the mood to rebel, especially after he gets an eyeful of the lovely Dawn (Milcania Diaz-Rojas) in a bikini down by the river.
She’s one of “them,” the folks who’ve been left to scavenge for food in the wake of the planet’s crops having all but succumbed to a killer fungus and its livestock felled by plague. They want what Hailey and her family have in abundance: crops, and even better, human flesh to supply some much-needed protein. But one glance at Dawn’s booty and Emanuel forgets everything he’s been taught about loyalty and closing ranks. Horniness will do that to a young man. And in no time, the farm is infiltrated by dozens of bloodthirsty white guys eager to seize what’s not theirs.
Thorne is a fan of the slow burn, taking his time in setting the stage for an action-filled third-act showdown between good and evil. For me, I found his pacing a tad too leisurely, causing an already too-long movie to feel even longer. I’m also not an admirer of his film’s muddy, poorly lit visuals, which often obscure our comprehension of what’s going on. And don’t get me started on the tiresome glut of post-apocalyptic fare, which already includes current offerings, “Sinners” and “28 Years Later.” Not to mention “The Last of Us” on Max.
What “40 Acres” has that its affiliates do not is that vastly intriguing premise of white guys stealing from two of history’s most pillaged ethnic groups: Blacks and Native Americans. But I’m puzzled as to why Thorne and Taylor didn’t expand upon that concept. Instead, they favor clichéd violence over drawing parallels between what’s currently going on in Washington, where robber barons are once again suppressing the rights of the poor and the powerless.
That’s not to discount all the good that “40 Acres” does through its subtle nods to historical fact. Not just its title, a reference to America’s broken promise to provide each freed slave 40 acres and a mule. But also the mass migration of hundreds of Blacks who fled the post-war South to establish homesteads in Canada, like the one that’s been passed down for generations in Hailey’s family. True, her surname, Freedom, is a bit too on the nose, but Thorne presents a compelling case for fighting to the death for what’s rightfully yours. It’s such a shame that more than 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, we are still waging these senseless battles over property and human rights. Will we ever learn? Sadly, I doubt it.
Movie review
40 Acres
Rated: R for language and strong violent content
Cast: Danielle Deadwyler, Michael Greyeyes, Kataem O’Connor, Milcania Diaz-Rojas and Elizabeth Saunders
Director: R.T. Thorne
Writers: Glenn Taylor and R.T. Thorne
Runtime: 112 minutes
Where: In theaters on July 2 (limited)
Grade: B-
