"No Man Is Free Who Is Not Master of Themselves..."
Carrying on in the footsteps of Allied, A United Kingdom, the third feature film from Amma Asante after A Way of Life and the heavily costumed drama, Belle, is another example of a film endangered by the severity of its' plot leakage within its' trailer, a trailer which not only has circulated the cinematic spectrum for months now, but is indeed another case study in how revealing too much just isn't worthwhile to the overall enjoyment of the film as a whole. Within the two-plus minutes of the trailer for A United Kingdom, the film's narrative is not only explained two-fold, albeit a formality of any teaser for an upcoming movie nowadays, but shows all of the film's highlights, highlights which when seen in the extended and fulsome picture just begs the question whether it was worth extending that 120 seconds into just under 120 minutes. Thankfully for A United Kingdom, the film ultimately does manage to pull through this fundamental issue and becomes a sweetly smart romantic drama, led primarily by the enormous acting talent of David Oyelowo who attempts to swerve the film away from near over-sentimentality and sort of succeeds amongst a string of two-dimensional portraits of characters that surround him.
Amongst the positives within Assante's latest, Oyelowo is undoubtedly the stand out performer, taking one tear-inducing scene in particular in his stride and giving the sort of performance similar to the much lauded and critically praised one in Selma. With Oyelowo in the driving seat, Pike is strangely underused in some way, resorting to the archetypal stranded mother character without having much chance to stand up and take control aside from a short scene in which we are meant to believe a quick detour to help out the locals completely wins over the puzzled masses. Although the film does begin in a rather hokey fashion, as soon as it departs into Botswana, the narrative does pick up and takes a satisfying dramatic turn, mixing in social issues, politics and romance, accumulating in a film which is strongest when it explores the overarching issues rather than the romance entwined within it, resulting in a somewhat messy outcome, but one which was enjoyable for the most part with Oyelowo's performance one of the main reasons to seek it out.
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