While there are some interesting war scenes in the movie, some of which get quite gory, “Free State of Jones” plays as one drawn out history lesson. Audiences should be prepared to be quite bored. Even the music is boring. Granted, you can’t have a movie that is just never ending battle sequences, but the scenes in-between fails to hold our attention. A bad sign is that the movie is a little over two hours, but it feels much longer! Scenes drag on and to follow up on the lesson, titles come up to let us know what happens too. These titles do not come at the very end like some other movies based on history, these come on throughout the movie.

Is the acting in “Free State of Jones” good? No, it is not. It is freaking fantastic! If it wasn’t, people would probably be tempted to walk out of the movie. Matthew McConaughey delivers his A game, as you would expect, but the stand out performance belongs to Mahershala Ali who plays Moses (not THAT Moses). People are expecting next year’s Oscar nominations to be more diverse. If Ali does not get nominated, a crime has been committed. The one factor that could work against him is that this is such a bad movie. Gugu Mbatha-Raw also turns in a memorable performance.

“Free State of Jones” is one of those movies that when you think it’s abut to end, it keeps going. Then you think it is finally going to end, and it still keeps going! No one wants to spend a summer night or day that way. If you are into history, then you would rather want to watch such a program over multiple nights. It would have been suited in that format. Instead, it’s a theatrical release. It is rated R for brutal battle scenes and disturbing graphic images.