We reach full overkill in the historical action epic “Emancipation” when an alligator rises up and pulls Will Smith’s Peter into the swamp, igniting a monumental battle in which Peter uses a small knife to stab the alligator again and again and again, ultimately killing the great beast and living to fight another day.
At that point, it becomes clear director Antoine Fuqua, screenwriter William N. Collage and Smith are more interested in delivering a thriller that plays like an 1863 version of “The Fugitive” than in delving too deep into the particulars of the real-life man who became a worldwide symbol of the horrors of slavery when photos of the monstrous keloid scarring of his back from repeated whippings were circulated around the world.
