Rob Peace (2024)

Rob Peace Review

A couple weeks ago, if you follow me on Twitter, you might have seen that I quote tweeted a man named Jeff Hobbs who shared something I said. My tweet had come directly after watching a movie and proclaiming it the type of film that makes worth trekking through the snow in Utah.

Jeff Hobbs is the man whose tweet I quoted, he wrote the book that inspired this movie, which is called Rob Peace. WHY I didn’t mind trekking through the snow at 9 AM for it let’s talk.

The biography The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace has been adapted into film form by Chiwetel Ejiofor. It is about a black American man from New Jersey named Rob, whom we meet as a child in 1987. Mary J Blige plays his mother Jackie opposite Chiwetel as his father Skeete (or maybe it’s spelled Skin or Skit or Skeeitt). Mother works multiple jobs while his father doesn’t seem to have one ever and could be described as “involved in drugs.” All young Robby has to do is stay focused on school and use that brilliant brain everyone knows he’s got, right? Be great so we all can get outta here.

Except systemic racism always pulls him back every time he tries to break free from its grasp in modern America. “Chaos was always waiting,” as someone says later on.

We see Rob through his roommate at Yale an author of the book Jeff Hobbs who conducted interviews with friends and family to put his story together. Therefore, he seems like any white American looking back at their complicity with racism each time they realize how often people who looked like them stopped somebody else from reaching potential that was obvious to everybody except themselves. This specific text hits different because of Chiwetel’s direction.

Jay Will must’ve done something incredible to play this role because seeing him during the QnA felt weird. As a little kid, one of his earliest memories is watching his house burn down literally. A metaphor for every fire he will have to put out throughout life. Jay Will’s incredibly moving and realized portrayal of Rob is mostly why this movie stayed interesting despite some basic plot stuff happening around him. All the insight into the sad boy’s brain comes from Jay Will doing that acting.

Chiwetel wrote himself some great scenes too though. His character is so mad at every institution that let him down that he projects all his anger and disappointment onto the only person left who cares, which happens to be his recently adulted son, without stopping to think about how unfair it might be to treat someone like this when they’re just figuring out how to exist on their own.

So Skeet gets worse and worse as time goes by, becoming more selfish as he loses hope for anything outside those cage bars being responsible for any part of his not being able to leave them behind even though none were gonna open ever anyway type deal and eventually leading Robert astray unintentionally after losing complete touch with reality altogether due to reasons mentioned above or below depending on where you put your gaze while reading what I’m writing here right now.

I don’t have much to say about Camilla Cabello except that even though people came out in droves to cheer her on at the screening, she doesn’t have much to do in the film. She plays the token girlfriend who tries to tell Rob not to go too far off track, and of course he doesn’t listen. She sees one side of him the man at Yale who keeps his head up despite racism at the Ivy League institution but Mary J. Blige, as the mother, sees the only other side.

The life she wants him to leave behind. Both women see Rob’s potential as a member of society, but perhaps a society he didn’t want any part of in movies like this, there’s always one woman who gets a front-row seat to a good man’s downfall while another is left behind with no choice but to look back at all her love could have been if only he’d let himself win. After Yale, he comes home and sells real estate; he goes back and teaches at his old school and has to be coaxed out of both these places again in order to achieve some “protentional.”Chi’s screenplay moves just fast enough for us not to notice we’re on edge; it’s unhurried but never boring it pays due respect to everybody whose story does not get told. To those who knew Rob Peace Maybe his story is just that of another young man caught with the wrong crowd for you. But through JB’s eyes then and Chiwetel’s lens now, we see a guy who was brilliant at everything but couldn’t come out on top because different unfair expectations were held over his head hard as ever he tried. Wesley Morris

Watch Rob Peace For Free On Gomovies.