Michael's Movie Grade: B+
An excellent historical biopic.
Coming out of seeing this movie in the theater, I heard a couple having a conversation, where one party said that he wants to read and learn more about George Washington. Whatever flaws you might find with this movie, I cannot find a better recommendation than that. When a historical biopic makes you want to learn more about the actual historical figure than it does its job very well.
To me the most appealing thing about this film is the story that it decides to tell. The story here takes place pre-revolutionary war and pre-presidency. This is just the type of story that I love to hear about famous historical figures. Today too many biopics simply tell the stories that we have heard many times. By focusing on a story about George Washington that much of the movie going audience has never heard of, this film feels fresher and more intriguing than most current biopics. It of course helps that the story is well told here. The casting is fantastic. There are some big-name stars in the cast including Andy Serkis, Ben Kingsly and Kelsey Grammer. However young William Franklyn-Miller steals the show from all of them in the title role. He is fantastic and charismatic here and you fully buy him as a great leader. The way the character is written is also excellent. This movie makes it hard not to root for and identify with him. The latter is not something that is often seen with depictions of George Washington, but it is something that is the very heart of this film. What we see here is not the larger-than-life historical figure but a man who learns from his mistakes and becomes a great leader because of them. This is much more important and emotionally resonate than simply showing him after he matured and become the man we hear about today.
This movie does have too many moments that can simply come off as corny. This type of clichéd corniness feels out of place in a film that is supposed to be a depiction of real historical events. Much of the dialogue is sadly the same cliché corny dialogue that appears in too many biopics these days. This is especially bad in the scenes that acknowledge the racial inequalities and prejudices that sadly play a part in the history of an otherwise great nation. As much as I love my country, these should be acknowledged and addressed in any part of our history as ugly as they can be. However, the writing of these scenes is quite bad with too many forced lines of dialogue that simply take one out of the movie.
Despite some poor dialogue, this movie is an excellent cinematic portrait of this major historical figure.
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