Growing up in Virginia, the stories of the War of Northern Aggression were about as common as statues, street names, and other memorials to Confederate leaders who died trying to prevent their state’s rights from being taken away. The legacy of the Civil War in the South is one in which the wrong people won and it’s all born out of a deep-seeded resentment and a false presumption of enhanced morality, which, truth be told, the specific state’s right being objected to was the right to own a person as property. Didn’t matter what ethnicity of the person, those in the South just wanted to own people and use them as they saw fit; it just so happened that the large quantity of individuals most affected by the repeal of legal slavery owned individuals whose ancestry exists in African countries. So weird that well past the end of the Civil War, the stories of freed peoples were often excised from history books to the point that this reviewer didn’t learn about the Tulsa Massacre until his late 30s and the Red Summer until his 40s. This is a crime unto a nation, because how can we, as a collective, move forward if the truth is so often hidden? This isn’t the question that writer/director Brett Smith (Never Land) seeks to answer in his feature-length Civil War era-set drama Freedom’s Path; rather, he seems to proclaim for those still unable to reason through it that cowardice comes in many forms, including a failure to use your privilege to help those who need it when you know wrong is being done.
Gerran Howell as William in FREEDOM’S PATH. Photo courtesy of Freedom’s Path Film, LLC.
Signing up to serve is one thing, but heading into battle is another — a truth that William (Gerran Howell) and his childhood friend Lewis (Harrison Gilbertson), both recently enlisted, learn as they move closer to their first skirmish. As dreams of heroism give way to the brutal reality of war, terrified William plays dead using a self-inflicted wound to avoid being killed by the overwhelming Confederate unit, waiting until the coast is clear before deserting his regiment. However, he doesn’t realize that he hurt himself too well and ends up needing rescuing. As luck would have it, he’s saved by Dee (Jermaine Rivers), Kitch (RJ Cyler), and their friends, Dee intent to take the wounded soldier to safety. Given medical attention and care, William is able to move around more and more each day, but he’s terrified of his truth coming to light and being sent away to war. But the longer he stays with them, the more he realizes that the war is more than about keeping the Union together and is being waged by many more away from the front lines in plain sight on the Underground Railroad.
L-R: RJ Cyler as Kitch and Gerran Howell as William in FREEDOM’S PATH. Photo courtesy of Freedom’s Path Film, LLC.
In watching the trailer for Freedom’s Path, a concern grew about whether the war drama would be another “white savior” type of film or, worse, one in which the Black characters are there to teach a lesson to the ignorant Whites and they learn to be friends. It being set during the Civil War gives little chance of the latter (though never zero) and the former is rarely done so well where it can entertain while not entirely patting itself on the back for its social-consciousness. The construction of Smith’s tale walks a delicate line because it uses William as the way into the story, but, to a large degree, his choices, impactful to him as they may be, are not as much to the outcome as a whole. Instead, many of the things that a different script would have him do to save the day, goes a different route to avoid the trope at near every turn. This ensures that while William does have a specific and important character arc, that what occurs is more focused on Kitch and his journey. Though not as full of bombast, a similar narrative trade is done in Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) wherein our titular character is the audience’s way in and spends the film either getting himself out of trouble or helping those who need it with the real focus being on the enigmatic Furiosa (Charlize Theron). Unlike Max (Tom Hardy) who’s used to getting into and out of scrapes, William is not, requiring Howell to dig deep to play a convincing coward who starts to see the errors in not only his own perspective about what it means to be a solider, but in the country as a whole.
Thomas Jefferson Byrd as Abner in FREEDOM’S PATH. Photo courtesy of Freedom’s Path Film, LLC.
Through the script, Smith demonstrates what a mess the country is through the choices of the characters. For William, we see it as someone who wants the glory and heroism of war, but can’t handle the cost required. For Kitch, one would presume it’d be merely the color of his skin, thereby being the obvious option for a Civil War picture, except it’s the dialogue from Cyler (The Book of Clarence) and the stories that Kitch tells that offer a different perspective. Cyler gives us a character who is fully formed before meeting William. Intelligent, perceptive, and capable, his stories more often evoking an experience with what we’d call Christian Nationalism today. Kitch tells of G-dly men and their children and all the horrible things that they do, meanwhile Cyler never presents Kitch as anything less than deserving of the same opportunities as others. Then there’s the slave hunter Silas (played without dipping into caricature by Ewen Bremner (Trainspotting; The Rundown)), who speaks of his targets as if he, too, is penitent before his faith but vicious, deceiving, and otherwise cruel to all others that he finds inferior. What these characters say, what they do, conveys just how differently the same people living in the same space can exist with differing perspectives on moral issues, some using faith as a protective blanket for their wrong-doing, some ignorant due to privilege, and some who take courage in doing the right thing because it’s the right thing.
Carol Sutton as Caddy in FREEDOM’S PATH. Photo courtesy of Freedom’s Path Film, LLC.
Credit to Smith and his team, though Freedom’s Path is now streaming on Paramount+, it was originally released in 2022 on the festival circuit before getting a theatrical and VOD release in the Fall of 2023. As such, it does have the touch of a smaller budget film, meaning that it focuses more on character than it does big action sequences. The stunts we do see, coordinated by Frank Blake (Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance), are grounded in realism, meaning that violence is portrayed as it would be for the era. What one may not realize is that wound that is potentially survivable today with modern medicine is not only a death sentence back then, but a painful one, an aspect the performances from the cast don’t skip over and provide with not an ounce of insincerity. No one’s reaching for the Oscar in the film, thereby generating far greater impact to the scene. It certainly helps that the cinematography by Chris Koser (Tooth) walks the line between emphasizing natural lighting and more traditional setups. In the few combat sequences, confusion and pandemonium rule, helping the audience to understand William’s terror, marking a heavy contrast against those around him, whether fellow solider, Dee, or Kitch. Later, using the same techniques, Koser captures life in the home that William is brought to, except there’s clarity and beauty. Two places existing in a similar space, yet one runs red with violence and the other a place of nurturing.
L-R: RJ Cyler as Kitch and Gerran Howell as William in FREEDOM’S PATH. Photo courtesy of Freedom’s Path Film, LLC.
In terms of the character work, the tension in the story is grounded realistically for the period, even if predictably. William is an ally, even if a shoddy one, whose secret is that he’s a coward. Kitch is trying to save others like himself, but doesn’t tell his caretaker, Caddy (Carol Sutton), the whole truth either. While we’re waiting for these proverbial bombs to eventually go off, there’s also Silas and his goons roaming the forest looking for runaways, making the already difficult task of shepherding people from one place to another even harder. While things play out about as you expect, credit to Smith as writer for not having them play out in the manner expected, thereby creating opportunity for audience surprise and meaningful character-centric moments. There are at least two moments in the film involving William that did push the boundaries of narrative logic, even with emotions running high, but they are forgivable against the whole.
Dion T. Burns as John in FREEDOM’S PATH. Photo courtesy of Freedom’s Path Film, LLC.
In my view, whether it’s Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015), Power Rangers (2017), The Harder They Fall (2021), or Emergency (2022), Cyler is one of the better up-and-coming actors, delivering a unique and stand out performance in anything he’s appearing in. He’s the reason that Kitch becomes more than a trope, giving depth and dimension and grounding where others may not. This is necessary to understand that Freedom’s Path may be following William, but it’s only so as to introduce us to the character who really matters for the length of the tale, Kitch. This is his story, his mission, his responsibility and, by sharing it with William, audiences have a chance to see that history is often rewritten by people who wish to keep things from you, who will just as easily scream and cry over removing memorials to traitors while also telling people to “get over” slavery without seeing the hypocrisy. One may initially discount a film like Freedom’s Path, a Civil War-set film released wide by Paramount+ at the start of Black History Month, and my question to you is: why? Why do we minimize or seek to discredit stories that don’t portray Black trauma but highlight triumph of a different sort? To that end, Smith’s film matters because it uses the White perspective only to create an opening for something far more important that others might miss: a voice different from their own.
In select theaters September 8th, 2023.
Available on VOD and digital October 6th, 2023.
Available on Paramount+ February 1st, 2024.
For more information, head to the official Freedom’s Path website.
Final Score: 4 out of 5.
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Categories: Home Video, Reviews, streaming
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