Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Film myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Sturdy new biopic Rob Peace is also a sleight of hand. In 1987 a string of crises arrive: a house burns, a marriage breaks down, a gun is produced. But hold tight for a change in tone. Those ominous sights resolve into a sweet scene of a young son and loving father.The older man is played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, who also directs. He hangs out on the steps of his apartment block in hardscrabble New Jersey with friends, listening to the ball game on a radio. The boy keeps him company, quietly delighted. And fate has better yet in store. That same poor Black kid, Robert Peace, grows into an academic prodigy. The movie takes shape as an uplifting multiplex entertainment.But your expectations may upend again. Based on real events, much of the movie hits familiar feelgood beats centred on gifted scientist Peace (Jay Will), soon accepted into Yale. For all that he arrives as a fish out of water, he proves socially magnetic as well as brilliant. And yet the past is not finished even as the future beckons. By now, his father has been jailed for murder. Robert’s belief in his innocence is such that there is always another call on his time and spirit, and one with its own stark trajectory.A talented actor himself, Ejiofor elicits good work from his cast: Will is compelling, as is Mary J Blige as Peace’s mother. But the film is sharply made off camera too: smart enough to be a portrait of one rare individual and an impersonal system. That push and pull between hope and harsher realities is the lot of both character and movie.★★★☆☆In UK cinemas from September 6
