River of Hope

Mary's hair is heat-damaged which is not period. Mary's cadence is overconfident and she has a fake drawl. Misspelling of closed captions. Dialogue is on the nose. A character holds a list that we see that contains a computer-generated font. I couldn't watch more than 20 minutes.

Given that this movie is actually based on real people and real events (Google Sam and Mary Cabell) I was VERY disappointed! Its a period piece, but the actress who played Mary, who was a slave, didn't act in the vein of a slave (as do most in time pieces of this nature). Even the way she SPOKE, her dialect, was wrong. The lines of the actors were loose, bland, off and just strange! The verbal exchanges between Mary and Sam, or Mary and anyone else in the movie were odd, because they would not have been allowed in that time period. The actors are no where near stellar, but one would at least expect them to act! I've seen bad movies before, but this was worse than bad. It could have been done SO much better than it was.

I absolutely didn't even understand the point of this movie. I love to write reviews on movies and I try to stay upbeat as well as positive but with this one I couldn't bring myself to give this a good rating. I'm just speechless on how terrible this movie is to be perfectly honest.

This film was excellent. I found out I was related to Samuel and Mary Cabell and once I googled them this film popped up. To see this history come to life was exhilarating. I am so grateful to the filmmaker. Yes, there are sound issues. Indeed this is not a Marvel movie but it is the first film by this filmmaker and it is telling a true story that most have never heard of including myself. The story and script are bigger than the film quality. This is history and it is depicted with authenticity. This is an excellent film for those who value history and anyone wanting to learn about "critical race theory."

The acting was so bad it was like watching a Bunch of high school Kids, no actually I have seen way better acting in high school plays. I don't understand this, these are all amateurs well most are. Good story.