In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Virginia, 1820s/30s. Nat Turner is a slave on a cotton plantation. Through his eyes we see the conditions the slaves have to live under, in particular, the brutality of the slave-owners. Due to having the rare privilege of being able to read, Nat is a Christian preacher. His ability to influence other slaves is used by the slave-owners to their own ends, and ultimately by Nat to fight back.Based on a true story, and produced by, directed by, written by and starring Nate Parker, this movie had the potential to be a powerful examination of the inhumanity of slavery. However, for the most part, it doesn't go anywhere new and is quite dull in its delivery. The first 70% or so of the movie would be only interesting to those who had never seen a movie or documentary on US slavery before. Pretty stock standard stuff, with one-dimensional characters and predictable plot. Quite clumsy at times too, with unnecessary symbolic imagery that is almost laughable. The final 30% sees the outcome of this brutality and is fairly interesting, with an ending that is reasonably powerful. However, it is underdeveloped and demonstrates how bad the pacing of the movie is. Instead of spending 70% on overdrawn setup and 30% on hasty conclusion, Parker should have built up the pace and spent more time on the outcome.On another note, the choice of title is interesting. The 1915 film The Birth of a Nation is one of the most controversial and divisive movies of all time. Directed by cinematic pioneer DW Griffith, on the one hand it is lauded as a seminal moment in movie history, due to its cinematographic innovations. However, it is also one of the most racist movies ever made, ending up as a pro-Ku Klux Klan propaganda campaign.If one of the aims of the 2016 The Birth of a Nation was to reclaim what the title means and set the record straight, fair enough. Just a pity the finished product doesn't come anywhere close to living up to that billing.Watch 12 Years a Slave instead.

A polarizing film that I don't think has gotten a fair shake. I liked it and thought it was a powerful film, even if it was a little romanticized and formulaic in some places. To start with, Nate Parker turns in a great performance as Nat Turner, and Aja Naomi King does as well as his wife. The rest of the ensemble cast is strong. The cinematography is beautiful, and Parker captures several beautiful, haunting images, the most indelible one for me coming when Turner notices a white girl skipping across a porch with a black girl skipping behind, playing, and yet on a leash. It's violent, but it also has quite a bit of tenderness, and is effective in showing that the enslaved were thinking, feeling people, just like you and me, and it also honors their culture. Lastly, it's accurate in showing the context for the rebellion (and certainly as accurate as many lauded historical films), and I think its power lies first and foremost in showing us the events unapologetically from an African-American's perspective. Parker uses a bit too much of a heavy hand at times, not uncommon for a first-time director, but this is a film that should be seen, and with an open mind.I think we've become so inured to scenes of brutality that they don't register with us anymore. We see slave owners brutalizing their "property" – human beings – and our reaction starts becoming either (a) oh yes, I've seen all that before, I know, I know, and by the way so-and-so shot it better, or (b) surely he's over-the-top in this scene, shamelessly exaggerating and distorting history. I think we have to acknowledge that these things happened. They happened. Lynchings. Ripping families apart. Rape. Extreme cruelty. Humiliation. Even the most liberal view at the time still believing in the black man's inherent inferiority. And on and on. This was the context of the rebellion. It's almost entirely accurate, or a reasonable portrayal where history is not known, and I forgive it for the places it may not be as artistic license - most notably Turner's own wife being raped, which was scrutinized so much that I think people missed the larger point.We're taught about the glory and honor of the Confederacy in most history classes, and oh yes, by the way, Nat Turner led a bloody rebellion three decades before the Civil War. You're going to tell me that the myth of the noble Southern gentlemen, the slaveowner who took loving care of his ignorant slaves for their own good, is more accurate than what this film shows? You're going to have the one-star reviewers with comments that literally begin with lines like "Not saying slavery was right, but…" and then say racism no longer exists in America? Nat Turner was a man who was highly intelligent, learned to read and write despite having limited educational opportunity, correctly likened slavery of blacks in the south to the slavery of the Israelites in Egypt, and (very) courageously attempted to rebel against extreme injustice. The film gets all these things right. Why do we not see him as a hero in our nation's history? Killing women and children is horrible, but put it in context, and ask, what was happening to Turner and his people before they did that? For centuries. To millions.The name of the film of course disrupts D.W. Griffith and his glorification of white supremacists, but it also makes us pause and think that for a portion of the citizens of our country, July 4, 1776 was not the birth of their nation. They were still in chains, and had not been able to declare independence. It's interesting to think of Turner's rebellion as that seminal moment, as the birth of a new nation, and I would not have thought of any of these things or known as much about him without this film. If it goes too far in depicting him as a 'nice guy', not showing all of those he killed in his uprising or not showing the odder side of his religious visions, well, maybe we should be thinking that a romanticized view is both a reaction to both our current culture, as well as a perspective someone else has that we haven't considered before. Making us think. You know, as artists do.

Now that the controversy has died down and Nate Parker the film maker has been denounced and banished by the political elite, it's time to take a closer look at THE BIRTH OF A NATION as film entertainment.The story of slave hero Nat Turner should be feverish, explosive, and suspenseful. Instead it's dull, slow, and predictable. White people make promises, and don't keep them. Young Nat Turner learns to read, and soon discovers he is different from other slaves. The Bible seems to comfort him at first, but then it makes him mad. The slaves join him and fight bravely, but everyone dies at the end. Nothing is a surprise from start to finish, except how much screen time is taken up by panoramic picture postcard views of cotton fields and trees festooned with Spanish Moss.Nate Parker has made a very boring movie about a very complicated and charismatic man. It's sad that the only powerful action sequence in the entire film comes when Nat Turner's father beats down a slave patrol and escapes into the night, never to be seen again. That scene takes about two minutes of screen time, and then it's gone. Nothing Nat Turner himself ever does is half as compelling or convincing.Four stars for the film maker's courage in attempting to tell the story. It was a risky move -- and he sure paid the price.

After hearing for most of my multi-decaded life that D. W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation" (1915) was a pioneering masterpiece in the film world I finally watched it in 2009. Then I gave it a 1 star rating and wrote this in my IMDb review: "I find the intellectual airy fairy commentary in the 10's section of the reviews here to be disturbing. Frankly, I think you people should be ashamed of yourselves for promoting this disgraceful homage to slavery and murder. Slavery is at the very least murder of the soul. But we all know that was the least of it's offenses. "The Birth of a Nation" is a bad film because it promotes a reprehensible ideology. The merits of it's production values are irrelevant. And not that it should make a difference but for the record, I am a southern white male." Readers at IMDb have rewarded me with a 46/92 rating. What a surprise. What we have here 100 years later in the new "The Birth of a Nation" (2016), finally, is the truth about slavery. Even "12 Years a Slave" was too cowardly to go where Nate Turner has gone. THAT film, "12 Years a Slave", would have you believe that some slave owners were benevolent. Really... This film is unflinching in its accurate portrayal of what slavery in America was like. It is stomach turning to watch the horrific beatings, rapes, torture, and just general bondage of people; and what other choice could there possibly be? Not showing it and pretending it didn't happen? Then add that it was conducted as routine commerce. Yes, other humans, slaves, were bought and sold; and there were no legal restrictions on what you could do to that person. These Crimes Against Humanity were done in the name of God, Christianity, and the U.S. Constitution. In the 40's when it was Hitler and the Holocaust we prosecuted and executed those responsible. Here, we just call it a difference of opinion and "states rights". Ask yourself this: is it possible to be a Christian in America during the slave holding years and, own, beat, and rape, other people because they have a different skin color than you; and then when you die be welcomed by God into Heaven? Just wondering. The performances by Nate Turner, Amie Hammer, Penelope Ann Miller, and others, are sensational for their commitment to authenticity. Actors are notorious for weakening their portrayals by forcing a sympathetic facet into the inventory of an utterly unsympathetic character. Kind of like trying to show the human side of Hitler. Armie Hammer does not fall into that trap. I knew he was in this film but I had trouble finding him only to discover that he was the behind the unrepentant face of a vicious slave owner with zero redeeming qualities. That takes guts and talent. Nate Turner is also good. His only weakness is that he is wearing so many hats in this production: lead actor, director, producer, screenwriter, etc. Being in that position is tough and he does it well. But he does a better job as director for his fellow cast members. His character, Nat Turner, is lynched in the end; and apparently with the many portrayals of lynchings inventoried in American cinema over the last 100 years plus, it has taken an African American producer/director/writer/actor to present that horrifying event from the perspective of the man being lynched/murdered. It is powerful and about damn time. Apart from this film's well crafted and honest depiction of the worst chapter in American history, it has served to magnetically draw out current day racists. This film turns race baiting on its head by telling the whole truth about slavery and drawing out racists who cannot handle it. Need proof? Read some of the reviews here with 6 stars or less. What's most amazing is that these reviewers are not even ashamed of themselves. So, racists? Unload! I'm looking for a worse than 46/92 here. Come on. I know you can do it.