{"id":21692,"date":"2024-01-27T21:51:44","date_gmt":"2024-01-28T02:51:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=21692"},"modified":"2024-01-27T21:51:44","modified_gmt":"2024-01-28T02:51:44","slug":"sundance-review-rob-peace-a-story-of-incredible-perseverance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=21692","title":{"rendered":"Sundance Review \/ Rob Peace: A Story of Incredible Perseverance\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

What people achieve is often defined by what others expect of them. Growing up in a poor neighborhood that few leave doesn\u2019t typically lead to success, and the chance to follow a different path can be equally appealing and unattainable. For one young man, the need to change things as he saw them around him was motivation enough to do incredible things. <\/span>Rob Peace<\/i><\/b> is a heartfelt portrait of a man who knew he could do whatever he wanted if he applied himself and managed to accomplish a great deal in his unfortunately short life.<\/span><\/p>\n

As a young child, Rob (Jelani Dacres) sees his father Skeet (Chiwetel Ejiofor) sent to prison for a double murder he swears he didn\u2019t commit. Raised by his mother Jackie (Mary J. Blige), a teenage Rob (Chance K. Smith) gets creative about making money to fund legal appeals for his father. As a young adult (Jay Will), he heads to Yale where his scientific knowledge impresses his professors and gives him access to prestigious opportunities. That skill helps him with a side gig that serves to continue making the necessary money to keep him and his family afloat: chemically enhancing marijuana to make it even more potent and sellable to his many classmates.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ejiofor returns to Sundance with his second directorial feature, following 2019\u2019s <\/span>The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind<\/i><\/b>. In some ways, this is a standard biopic with conventional dialogue. But the story at its heart is a legitimately interesting and compelling one that features an extraordinary protagonist. Among its most potent scenes is when Peace is working in a lab and responds aggressively to someone who questions his right to be there, not content to be talked down to by someone who thinks he doesn\u2019t belong. And he earns it – he\u2019s as resilient as he is resourceful, never backing down from a challenge.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Rob
Chiwetel Ejiofor, director of Rob Peace, an official selection of the Premieres Program at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Peace\u2019s trajectory finds him always one step ahead, thinking about how he can accomplish more and what will be needed to do so. Each aspect of the story, including Skeet\u2019s criminal case, Peace\u2019s social life at Yale, and his immersion into the drug trade, is given equal weight, and having Peace portrayed by three different actors helps it feel like he\u2019s been fostered in part by the audience. The film sees him grow up, as he says in voiceover, too fast, and he\u2019s constantly torn in different directions and still manages to do more in just a few years than many watching will have done in their entire lives.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ejiofor is no stranger to playing a long-suffering person treated poorly by the legal system following his Oscar-nominated performance in <\/span>12 Years a Slave<\/i><\/b>. Here, he brings a charm that\u2019s replaced almost immediately by anger once he\u2019s behind bars. He makes a plea to the judge that the woman who identified him surely can\u2019t be trusted and that he\u2019s innocent, and while he celebrates the few minor victories that his son helps him achieve, he\u2019s filled much more by a bitter resentment for his predicament. Ejiofor does a strong job of directing himself and also of ensuring that he doesn\u2019t become the focus of a film that\u2019s meant to be about a different generation of the family. Blige does well opposite him as another type of role model who also has her own issues with how Peace spends his time, and Camila Cabello is memorable as Rob\u2019s girlfriend who pushes him to stay on the right path.<\/span><\/p>\n

Much of the film\u2019s weight rests on Will, whose most prominent credit to date is alongside Sylvester Stallone in the Paramount+ TV series <\/span>Tulsa King<\/i><\/b>. He gets a great start from Dacres and Smith, both making impressive feature film debuts, and carries it from there with an endearing performance of someone who knows he can do great things and isn\u2019t going to be told by anyone where he has to stop. It\u2019s a compelling turn and a fitting tribute to the real Peace, who surely would be doing extraordinary things if he was still alive today.<\/span><\/p>\n

Grade: B+<\/b><\/p>\n

Check out more of Abe Friedtanzer\u2019s articles<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rob Peace<\/i><\/b> makes its world premiere in the <\/span>Premieres section<\/span><\/a> at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What people achieve is often defined by what others expect of them. Growing up in a poor neighborhood that few leave doesn\u2019t typically lead to success, and the chance to follow a different path can be equally appealing and unattainable. For one young man, the need to change things as he saw them around him…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":21694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[3812,20154,6065,20155,20153,977,20152,643,20022,20023],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nSundance Review \/ Rob Peace: A Story of Incredible Perseverance\u00a0<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Chiwetel Ejiofor returns to Sundance with his latest film, Rob Peace, about an incredible young mind whose life was cut tragically short.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=21692\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sundance Review \/ Rob Peace: A Story of Incredible Perseverance\u00a0\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Chiwetel Ejiofor returns to Sundance with his latest film, Rob Peace, about an incredible young mind whose life was cut tragically short.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=21692\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Cinema Daily US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-01-28T02:51:44+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Rob-Peace.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1088\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"612\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Abe Friedtanzer\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@https:\/\/twitter.com\/movieswithabe\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Abe Friedtanzer\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=21692\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=21692\",\"name\":\"Sundance Review \/ Rob Peace: A Story of Incredible Perseverance\u00a0\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=21692#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=21692#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Rob-Peace.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2024-01-28T02:51:44+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-01-28T02:51:44+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/#\/schema\/person\/6d4d1be5055fa0a21c6be5ee2b54ae10\"},\"description\":\"Chiwetel Ejiofor returns to Sundance with his latest film, Rob Peace, about an incredible young mind whose life was cut tragically short.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=21692#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=21692\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=21692#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Rob-Peace.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Rob-Peace.jpg\",\"width\":1088,\"height\":612,\"caption\":\"A still from Rob Peace by Chiwetel Ejiofor, an official selection of the Premieres Program at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | Photo courtesy of Gwen Capistran.\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=21692#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Sundance Review \/ Rob Peace: A Story of Incredible Perseverance\u00a0\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/\",\"name\":\"Cinema Daily US\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/#\/schema\/person\/6d4d1be5055fa0a21c6be5ee2b54ae10\",\"name\":\"Abe Friedtanzer\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Abe-Friedtanzer-150x150.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Abe-Friedtanzer-150x150.png\",\"caption\":\"Abe Friedtanzer\"},\"description\":\"Abe Friedtanzer is a film and TV enthusiast who spent most of the past fifteen years in New York City. He has been the editor of MoviesWithAbe.com and TVwithAbe.com since 2007, and has been predicting the Oscars, Emmys, Golden Globes, and SAG Awards since he was allowed to stay up late enough to watch them. He has attended numerous film festivals including Sundance, Tribeca, and SXSW, and is a contributing writer for The Film Experience, Awards Radar, and AwardsWatch.\",\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.cinemadailyus.com\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/movieswithabe\/\",\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/https:\/\/twitter.com\/movieswithabe\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?author=5\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Sundance Review \/ Rob Peace: A Story of Incredible Perseverance\u00a0","description":"Chiwetel Ejiofor returns to Sundance with his latest film, Rob Peace, about an incredible young mind whose life was cut tragically short.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=21692","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Sundance Review \/ Rob Peace: A Story of Incredible Perseverance\u00a0","og_description":"Chiwetel Ejiofor returns to Sundance with his latest film, Rob Peace, about an incredible young mind whose life was cut tragically short.","og_url":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=21692","og_site_name":"Cinema Daily US","article_published_time":"2024-01-28T02:51:44+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1088,"height":612,"url":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Rob-Peace.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Abe Friedtanzer","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@https:\/\/twitter.com\/movieswithabe","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Abe Friedtanzer","Est. reading time":"4 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=21692","url":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=21692","name":"Sundance Review \/ Rob Peace: A Story of Incredible Perseverance\u00a0","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=21692#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=21692#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Rob-Peace.jpg","datePublished":"2024-01-28T02:51:44+00:00","dateModified":"2024-01-28T02:51:44+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/#\/schema\/person\/6d4d1be5055fa0a21c6be5ee2b54ae10"},"description":"Chiwetel Ejiofor returns to Sundance with his latest film, Rob Peace, about an incredible young mind whose life was cut tragically short.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=21692#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=21692"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=21692#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Rob-Peace.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Rob-Peace.jpg","width":1088,"height":612,"caption":"A still from Rob Peace by Chiwetel Ejiofor, an official selection of the Premieres Program at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | Photo courtesy of Gwen Capistran."},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=21692#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Sundance Review \/ Rob Peace: A Story of Incredible Perseverance\u00a0"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/#website","url":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/","name":"Cinema Daily US","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/#\/schema\/person\/6d4d1be5055fa0a21c6be5ee2b54ae10","name":"Abe Friedtanzer","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Abe-Friedtanzer-150x150.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Abe-Friedtanzer-150x150.png","caption":"Abe Friedtanzer"},"description":"Abe Friedtanzer is a film and TV enthusiast who spent most of the past fifteen years in New York City. He has been the editor of MoviesWithAbe.com and TVwithAbe.com since 2007, and has been predicting the Oscars, Emmys, Golden Globes, and SAG Awards since he was allowed to stay up late enough to watch them. He has attended numerous film festivals including Sundance, Tribeca, and SXSW, and is a contributing writer for The Film Experience, Awards Radar, and AwardsWatch.","sameAs":["https:\/\/www.cinemadailyus.com","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/movieswithabe\/","https:\/\/twitter.com\/https:\/\/twitter.com\/movieswithabe"],"url":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?author=5"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21692"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}