This real-life tale of an enslaved man turned US marshal is a tense, thoughtful interrogation of what liberty means. Dennis Quaid and David Oyewolo put in wonderful performances
There is a challenge, amounting virtually to a moral responsibility, when making a drama set in the time of the American enslavement of Black people. That is: to find a way of bringing home its fundamental horror to an audience now long accustomed to depictions of it.
Lawmen: Bass Reeves, which begins in Arkansas in 1862, amid the American civil war, finds it in a scene set round a card table. Bass (David Oyelowo, who co-produces as well as stars) and his enslaver, George Reeves (Shea Whigham), are playing for his freedom. This chance, this flip of a card, is Bass’s reward for acquitting himself heroically in the Confederate army, to which he was effectively conscripted when George enlisted.