Chiwetel Ejiofor’s “Rob Peace” Avoids the Heavy Hand of Cliché, Yet Still Misses the Delicate Balance the Film’s Subject Deserved
The thing you have to know about storytelling is perspective makes all the difference. One vantage point can tell a completely different story from another. So when telling the true story of a real life character, it’s important to get it right. But what’s the right perspective when it comes to exploring the complicated life of a brilliant, young African American scholar whose heart clearly lies in the troubled, depressed Orange, New Jersey community from which he emerged? This question is certainly one Chiwetel Ejiofor had to grapple with when taking on his sophomore writing/directing project in Rob Peace. Adapted from Jeff Hobb’s 2014 biography, “The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace,” the film explores the tangle of conflicts and dreams of young Shaun (Robert) Peace, a boy with a brilliant mind whose deep loyalty to his Orange, New Jersey community poses a struggle to realizing the opportunities that mind may present.
The film begins in 1987 when “Rob” (Jelani Dacres) is just a boy awaiting the arrival of his father, played by Ejiofor. Skeet, as he is known, emanates from the same depressed community, and reveals all the pitfalls it entails for an African American male. Yet, he also reveals a powerful love for, and belief in his young son, whom he challenges often with math games to sharpen his skills. The bond the two share is evident from the film’s outset, and is an important glue in the tangle of conflicts Rob struggles with throughout the film. Rob’s mother, Jackie (Mary J. Blige), is doggedly determined to keep Rob on the trajectory she knows lies ahead for him if only he can avoid the kinds of difficulties Skeet has succumbed to along the way.
Her determination is only heightened when Skeet is arrested and convicted of a murder he insists he did not commit. Jackie, having long since lost her enamor of Rob’s father, works to distance him more and more from Skeet, while pursuing a private education for the young scholar. But Rob’s loyalty to his father (and the community with which he identifies so intently) only deepens.
While at St. Benedict’s Prep School in Newark, a young Rob (now played by Chance K. Smith) spies flaws in his father’s defense and balances his time excelling in his studies and waterpolo with critical review of the details of Skeet’s case. Rob is determined to prove his father innocent. Such ambitions for a young high-school scholar shed light on just the kind of outsized mind and confidence young Rob possessed.
The film jumps forward and Rob is a young adult matriculating through Yale University, where he’s caught the eye of Professor Durham (Mare Winningham), who sees a great brilliance in the young freshman. She elevates him with access to educational opportunities years beyond his grade level, which he handles with relative ease.
Along the way, the film clearly delineates Rob’s world splitting neatly along two distinct lines: Ivy League elite and the Orange, New Jersey community he loves. He takes his mother’s advice and stays true to himself, never forgetting where his loyalties lie, but still struggles with the conflict of his father’s incarceration and how it will affect how he’s viewed by his peers.
He’s under intense pressure with Skeet seemingly buckling under the weight of the prospect of a life in prison. Soon the fight to free his father becomes especially costly when Rob finds an attorney who will take the case, and he’s struck with the need to raise a lot of cash to move things forward. His campus job simply won’t cut it, and he sees a lifeline in bringing together the two worlds that have embraced him on campus. At a party where his water polo team mates run out of marijuana, Rob takes the crew to meet some of his social circle on campus, Black and Brown students with a similar penchant for the recreation. To that circle’s surprise, the melding of the two realms is a hit, and Rob eyes a solution to his problem. He begins selling marijuana to the elite Yale students on campus and quickly raises the money he needs for his father’s appeal.
His friends warn him about how differently a student selling drugs to white Yale scholars is viewed when he’s Black. The double standard, notwithstanding, Rob forges ahead at a lucrative pace until his scheme is discovered by campus administrators, and his room is raided. He narrowly evades discovery of the stash he’s amassed, but the damage is done when Professor Dunham rescinds an offer to support Rob’s bid to apply for graduate school. She doesn’t abandon him entirely, however. She advocates successfully for his graduation just weeks before the event, but Rob’s hope of a post graduate academic career in science is all but lost.
Back home Rob finds satisfaction in a teaching career at St. Benedict’s, where he inspires young minds like his years before while nurturing a nagging desire to go after that post-graduate career. He goes on to develop a thriving local real estate business, flipping homes in Orange, New Jersey and growing his financial stake for that purpose. But when the real estate bubble of 2008 crushes the market, Rob and the team he’s meticulously built are left holding the bag on several home loans, a devastating blow for the start-and-stop trajectory Rob has seen.
Faced with financial ruin for his team and possibly the community, Rob returns to selling marijuana. But this time, in the hard knuckled Orange, New Jersey community, the stakes are much higher, and Rob finds he’s ruffling feathers a lot heavier than administrators at Yale. Out of his depth and in way too deep, Rob is tragically killed in a drug deal gone bad, and gone are the hopes and dreams he shared with his mom.
Cast as the lead is Jay Will in his debut performance, who gives a tour-de-force turn as the brilliant, yet conflicted Rob. Will wears Rob’s personal conflict like a second skin, while moving comfortably between the two worlds Rob straddles so neatly. He walks into this role at one with the charm and magnetism real life Rob must have possessed, and the poignance of his internal struggle is palpable on screen.
Ejiofor manages to give a sympathetic turn as the text-book, troubled Black father, worn by a dearth of opportunities and toppled by the streets he clings to. We see in him moments of fear, frustration and anger about the situation he’s in. We fail to embrace these moments before Skeet dies behind bars because of the familiarity of his plight. Yet they become richly poignant revelations about our own assumptions when it’s later revealed that there was evidence of his innocence, a revelation that nearly cripples Rob, whose last interaction with his father on screen questioned his innocence.
The problem with Rob Peace is simply that perspective the film takes is still askew. Focus aims acutely at the salacious elements of Rob’s story, lending it to caricature and stereotype. Rob’s graduation from Yale, for instance, must have been a pinnacle of achievement for him and his family. Yet, we’re left to imagine what that moment must have been like for him. Other, more humanizing, elements of Rob’s trajectory are sped up or skipped entirely, like his maturing relationship with Yale classmate and girlfriend Raquel, played by Camila Cabello. She seemed to serve as a grounding element for the conflicted student, yet we see very little of the softening effect she must have had on him.
The film is also narrated by an adult Rob Peace, voiced by Will. The choice seems to be an economic device used to scale down a sprawling story. Yet, it actually slows the pace of the film when expounding on concepts and relationships that play out effectively enough onscreen.
These issues notwithstanding, Rob’s story still shines through, illuminating the vibrancy and brilliance of a complicated young man faced with choices no one should ever have to make. And while the film doesn’t entirely avoid cliche. It does peel back the veneer just long enough to show us a human being sparring within to do the right thing for himself, his family and his community – all at the same time – and felled at the battle by an all-too-familiar tragic choice.
Update: Rob Peace has been acquired by Republic Pictures and will make its way to movie theaters in the fall.
