PLOT: The true story of Rob Peace (Jay Will), a promising academic who, in a desperate attempt to raise money for his incarcerated father (Chiwetel Ejiofor) started a marijuana business that put his future in jeopardy.
REVIEW: One of the recurring themes of this year’s Sundance was fatherhood. It’s a theme that cropped up in one of the fest’s most popular documentaries, Daughters, and was also prominent in films like Freaky Tales, Love Lies Bleeding, and Exhibiting Forgiveness. Most of the relationships were depicted as at least somewhat dysfunctional, and Rob Peace, in some measure, follows suit.
It begs the question, what would you sacrifice to save your father? Most movies – when they ask this question – do the reverse. We’re used to seeing stories about parents sacrificing things for their children, but not the reverse. In Rob Peace, which is based on a story that’s all too tragically true, Tulsa King breakout Jay Will plays Rob Peace. A mathematical and scientific genius, he’s a star student at a Christian private school, where one of the teachers in charge, Michael Kelly’s Reverend Leahy, has taken a particular interest. In unison with Rob’s mom, Jackie (played by the always great Mary J. Blige), he encourages Rob to pursue an Ivy League education. Still, Rob’s heart is with his father, Skeet (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who’s in prison for murder. He says he’s innocent, and Rob believes him (his mother isn’t so sure). Rob is willing to jeopardize his future to save his father, even if it means using his mathematical and scientific acumen to sell weed.
Peace’s dilemma is one we identify with. Will plays him perfectly in a role far removed from what he does on the excellent Tulsa King. Rob is a genius and well-liked, with him bonding just as well with his upper-crust white roommate, Benjamin Papac’s Jeff Hobbs, as he does with any of his friends from the old neighbourhood (in real life, Hobbs wrote the book this movie is based on, “The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace”). But, you also get why he’d be willing to sacrifice everything for his father, with Ejiofor (who also directed the movie) his charismatic best as his father, who swears he’s innocent.
Ejiofor’s movie never judges Skeet too strongly, even if, as Blige’s Jackie tells Rob, his father would let him destroy himself in order to walk free. It’s a tough question that the movie asks, and you sympathize with Rob’s plight throughout.
One thing the movie does is show how, even if there was drama with his father and plenty of unconscious racial bias at his university, many people were on Rob’s side, including Kelly’s Leahy and Mare Winningham as his scientific mentor. All this makes Rob Peace a real tragedy, as even without knowing his story beforehand, you have an inkling of where this is going right from the start.
Yet, Ejiofor keeps the film entertaining and never too heavy-handed. He has an impressively light touch as a director, eschewing easy melodrama and trying to show there was more to Peace’s life than just tragedy. In that way, it’s a fitting tribute to a person who, if things were different, might have changed the world in a positive way.