Chiwetel Ejiofor, the British actor and screenwriter, hits a home run directing “Rob Peace,” a gripping biopic streaming on Netflix now. This film is based on a 2014 biography, “The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace.”
The storyline is linear. As a youth, Peace becomes a high-achieving student. He excels in math and science.
Peace overcomes the adversity of class and skin color to achieve educational and, later, occupational success. We see an individual defying the odds, making choices that land him in a prestigious high school then Ivy League university.
The personal drive of Peace, however, intersects with a structural feature of U.S. society over the past four decades that has harmed African American families most harshly. I mean of course the nation’s prison-industrial complex, which disproportionately locks up Black Americans as an upper class has demanded and received policies such as deindustrialization that shift income and wealth from the bottom and middle to the top.
That’s capitalism for you. Accordingly, the overriding theme in “Rob Peace” is straightforward. America can’t school its way to equality.
That is my takeaway. I am cribbing from “Class Dismissed: Why We Cannot Teach or Learn Our Way Out of Inequality,“ John Marsh’s 2011 book (Monthly Review Press). This theme resonates in “Rob Peace” due in no small measure to the cast.
I’ve been a big fan of Ejiofor since watching him costar in “Dirty Pretty Things,” the 2002 crime drama. In “Rob Peace,” Ejiofor plays the main character’s father. He is convicted of a double homicide in Orange, New Jersey.
A motive for this capital crime is unclear. A key witness for the defendant dies. The prosecution prevails.
Jay Will, who portrays the main character, delivers a stellar performance as a son doing everything he can to reverse his father’s conviction. That is an uphill battle given the family’s working-class income. That desperation has ramifications on many levels.
Peace’s family is politically disenfranchised. They suffer in a society that millionaire politicians govern, with the greenbacks of billionaire donors. Author and reporter Greg Palast calls it “the best democracy that money can buy.”
Want proof? The recent dollar-saturated presidential campaign is a case in point. Political consultants and corporate media are laughing all the way to the bank.
Mary J. Blige stars as Peace’s hard-working mother. Blige brings authenticity to this character that put me in mind of her work in the 2017 film “Mudbound.” Blige speaks volumes with her facial expressions.
Camila Cabelli plays the love interest of Peace. They meet at Yale University, young people just beginning their lives, with all the messiness that brings.
“Rob Peace” is an indictment of a social order that requires those who are born into trying circumstances to be superhuman to gain a level of comfort as adults. Few are born on third base thinking they got there hitting a triple. In the real world, it is familial income and wealth that explains how such an entitled base runner stands 90 feet from home plate.
Seth Sandronsky lives and works in Sacramento. He is a journalist and member of the Pacific Media Workers Guild. Email sethsandronsky@gmail.com.
From The Progressive Populist, January 1-15, 2025
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