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Created Jul 02, 2016 04:21PM PST • Edited Jul 02, 2023 04:12PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Really Great 4.5

   Newton Knight is a newly essential Matthew McConaughey role that finally knights Newt Knight as a true American hero. Even more, Free State of Jones is an only-in-America story, so corny it could only be true. A deeply moral white man frees enslaved blacks and marries a black woman during the Civil War. Whaaat?

   Knight was a 19th century Mississippi übermensch: physically, morally and martially superior to those around him. He was a burly 6’4" at a time when the average man was a skinny 5’8". A yeoman farmer who had no slaves, he depended on his own labor to feed his family, as did most of his neighbors in the largely slave-free Jones County, Mississippi. When the slave-holding grandees who ran the Confederacy granted rich slave owners leave from the war for every 20 slaves they owned, feisty Newt and his Jones County rebels realized the Rebel Cause was a scheme where poor men died fighting a rich man’s war.

   Gary Ross’s outstanding and important movie has been maligned for some rather minor flaws. To wit, some of his many title cards cover the entire screen. Others partially run off it, at least at the theater where I saw Free State of Jones. Set mostly during the 1860s Civil War and the Reconstruction years that followed, it somewhat inartfully flashes forward to a 1948 race trial. But that trial really happened, after Newt Knight’s great-grandson, one-eighth black, committed the then crime of marrying a white woman.

   Given that biographical dramas are lashed to their subject’s story, including important codas, it seems essential that Ross shows the repugnant Jim Crow trial that occurred some 80 years after the Civil War.

   The past isn’t dead and buried. It’s not even past.

   William Faulkner’s timeless quote about trauma in Mississippi turns out to be wrong when it comes to Newt Knight and the Free State of Jones. It was dead and buried, at least outside southeastern Mississippi. Now Free State of Jones has revived it. Republican Unionists in Rebel Mississippi seem very real indeed.

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

   Matthew McConaughey is pumping out iconic roles with such regularity that it’s possible his Newton Knight won’t end up as one of his four Known Fors. Indeed, McConaughey’s Southern Man Mount Rushmore has now burst its boundary, with Newt Knight joining four others: his Mud, his wily DA in Bernie, his Oscar-winner in Dallas Buyer’s Club, and even his early role as the sheriff in Lone Star.

   Keri Russell & Gugu Mbatha-Raw are each affecting as his first and second wives, Serena & Rachel. Russell looks almost like a dust-bowl Okie, plaintively standing by her man as long as possible under wartime duress. Mbatha-Raw jumped off screen in a variety of movies before this, including Concussion and Larry Crowne, in which she was the one good thing in that not very good Tom Hanks vehicle. She’s terrific here as a slave who ultimately leads a fully realized life as Knight’s common-law wife.

   • Mahershala Ali emanates dignity as a slave who joins up with the Knight Company.
   • Jacob Lofland is a promising young actor, as he showed with McConaughey in Mud. He’s less impressive here, albeit his role is not nearly so prominent.
   • Lawrence Turner plays Newt’s semi-learned buddy Chester.
   • Troy Hogan is quietly affecting and tremendously dignified as a slave who helps Knight and later joins his Company.
   • Brian Lee Franklin plays Newt Knight’s great-grandson Davis Knight in the 1948 race trial scenes.
   • A large cast fills out the rest of this big movie as yeoman farmers, slaves, soldiers and more.

5. Male Stars Really Great 4.5

6. Female Stars Really Great 4.5

7. Female Costars Really Great 4.5

8. Male Costars Really Great 4.5

10. Film

    Really Great 4.5

    Free State of Jones is an important contribution to Civil War era films in general. It reveals post Civil War Reconstruction in particular, something we haven’t seen before. We have seen horrifically realistic depictions of slavery these past several years, most especially with 12 Years a Slave and even with the outstanding Underground on TV. Yet Free State of Jones breaks new ground, from the barbaric contraption a runaway slave is forced to wear on his head, to former slaves learning to read and then teaching others.

11. Direction Really Great 4.5

12. Play Really Great 4.5

13. Music Really Great 4.5

14. Visuals Really Great 4.5

    • 100 stuntmen
    • 100s of Civil War reenactors
15. Content

16. Edge

    Sordid 2.7

    The movie opens during a typically savage Civil War battle, with Matthew McConaughey’s Newton Knight hauling wounded Rebels to a barbaric field hospital. Gird your loins. The Civil War was remarkably cruel.

17. Sex Titillating 1.7

18. Violence Savage 3.7

19. Rudeness Profane 2.6

21. Reality

    Glib 1.3

    Gary Ross and storywriter Leonard Hartman list half a dozen scholars as consultants in the end credits of Free State of Jones. Yet several characters are admitted amalgamations. To his considerable credit, Ross has provided a site containing his director’s notes on the accuracy of Free State of Jones.

    Also worth a read is Smithsonian Magazine’s True Story of the Free State of Jones.

    Finally, how only-in-America is Free State of Jones? Utterly, from the culture of guns to the rugged independence to the dogged pursuit of happiness. Glory, glory, hallelujah!

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.8

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0