Rob Peace review – Chiwetel Ejiofor’s moving fact-based tragedy

How do you tell the story of Rob Peace? He was an exceptionally smart Black kid living in New Jersey, the product of a hard-working mother and a father who was convicted of murder when he was seven. His intellect and interest in science took him all the way to Yale on a scholarship, but circumstance took him back home and to a period of dealing drugs, a bright star crashing to earth, shot to death at the age of 30.

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It’s a horrible, haunting tale, told by his old roommate Jeff Hobbs in the book The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, and now adapted to the big screen by Chiwetel Ejiofor, in his sophomore feature as director. Trying to find a way to sensitively bring it to life, to weave a way through a maze of assumptions and cliches, is an unenviable trek. And while Rob Peace, premiering at Sundance, isn’t without missteps, it’s a film made with enough tact and empathy to offset alarm, a robust follow-up to Ejiofor’s debut, the moving Malawi-set drama The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. Like that film, it’s earnestly told and full of big emotion, sometimes to a fault, and further legitimises Ejiofor as a dedicated director with a sweeping commercial eye. The film might be for sale at the festival, but it comes with what seems to be a substantive budget and some small roles for big names – Mary J Blige as Peace’s mother, Camila Cabello as his girlfriend, Ejiofor himself as his father – and with an enthused and reactive premiere in the bag, it surely won’t be on the shelf for long.

While pre-publicity might have focused on those juicier names, it’s the relative newcomer Jay Will as Rob, in one of the festival’s most indelible star-making turns, who should have everyone talking after. He’s a total knockout, brightening every room he enters, easily convincing us of the buoyant charm that those around him were so spellbound by. Rob is shown to be intimidatingly intelligent, using science to make sense of the senseless world around him, as well as an enduring, often naive, optimist. He carried the weight of his father’s sentence on his shoulders, trying to find ways, and funds, to prove his innocence while working his way through a college that already demanded so much from him. Will shows us how he manoeuvred through these trials, knowing how to fit in without ever forgetting who he was, an astonishingly confident performance from someone who ably carries a difficult film on his untrained shoulders.

But as much as we, as audience members, might trust Will’s ability to guide us through, Ejiofor’s writing doesn’t often feel as confident of him. He scatters some mostly unnecessary bits of voiceover that frequently tell us either what we already know or what Will’s absorbing face can already convey. Other scraps of dialogue feel similarly extraneous or overstated, clumsily vocalising the film’s themes and Rob’s struggle in ways that feel inelegant, too much telling over showing. The script sees characters repeatedly reminding us of Rob’s innate goodness, something we already see not only in the raw facts of his story but again in Will’s unending charisma. Ejiofor is a mostly impressive director but he overcooks at times – the sun shining between an overscored, Nicholas Sparks-esque first kiss, some graceless sped up or slowed down scenes of action – and like with his writing, sometimes the direction could have benefited from a bit less blare and bit more subtlety.

Because for a lot of the film, he actually displays a knack for knowing when to pull back. Will’s time at Yale avoids an excess of conflict, with microaggressions shown in brief but effective bursts, and his final descent told plainly without exploitation, Ejiofor knowing by then that the story will tell itself without a heavy hand. While Blige is a little flat, Ejiofor makes for an effectively conflicted father, never becoming the bad dad cliche he could have been, wanting the best for his son while also demanding so much of him. Cabello is fine but underserved, the film far too busy to spend enough time on their romance, leaving a final stroke of emotion between the pair a little underpowered.

A finer movie would have seen a more delicate touch employed throughout but Rob Peace still avoids enough traps for it to land its final blow, Ejiofor tracing his downfall as the result of grander forces at play, the result of living in a country where true social mobility is close to impossible. Rob is turned from stereotype to person, thanks to Will’s incredible work and Ejiofor’s unwavering commitment to capturing a full life, supported by Rob’s mother off screen. It’s an involving yet troubling tribute.

• Rob Peace is screening at the Sundance film festival and is seeking distribution