Roots (2016)

The miniseries may veer into obvious melodrama from time to time, especially in the latter two nights, but the fact that it never loses credibility owes to the care with which the moral bases of the characters are created. ... The performances are staggering throughout the entire miniseries.

A propulsive, plot-driven narrative and performances remarkable for their emotional depth and physicality keep you constantly engaged. A strong imagination for the slave experience—their ambivalence about the Revolutionary War; their attitudes about love, family, religion—yields dramatic richness and cultivates great empathy.

Roots is at once a more intimate and explicit document than was its forerunner and no less compelling, if you can endure the harshness of the spectacle that accompanies it.

The new Roots excels in the naturalism of its performances to make the horror of slavery vividly painful--and the resistance to it uplifting--in a way that deepens the tale.

It's still a gripping story, convincingly performed.

Indispensable, infuriating, and inspiring, Roots masterfully finds the hope and humanity in its heartbreaking, harrowing depiction of slavery, and in doing so provides an update worthy of the original.

The story is as relevant as ever, cinematically more stunning and historically more accurate than the original. The casting is again superlative--Forest Whitaker as “Fiddler,” Jonathan Rhys Meyers as villain Tom Lea, James Purefoy, Anika Noni Rose and Laurence Fishburne are just the start.

Told with style and assurance, this "Roots" revival is packed with credible performances, including Anika Noni Rose's terrific portrayal of Kunta's daughter, Kizzy in her older years, and Rege-Jean Page's charismatic turn as her son, Chicken George.

There are a few clumsy spills into melodrama, but overall this eight-hour effort is rousing, funny, frightening and heartbreaking--an affirmation of life and a condemnation of racism in all its ancient and surviving forms.

While the first episode lacks development of any of the characters outside of Kunta Kinte, a young man taken from Africa and sold into slavery in the United States, it still resonates. It’s a story that needs to be told again.

History’s new vision of Roots justifies its existence almost immediately, reinforcing its worthiness through amazing performances and a tweaked narrative that puts more focus on the interior lives of the slaves.

The History network, in on-air partnership with Lifetime and A&E, has brought forth a Roots that stands tall on its own, but without surpassing the production that once gripped a nation and should still be seen by viewers of all ages.

It’s more urgent and visceral, the blood more copious, the agony more intense. This Roots doesn’t flinch, but you almost certainly will. The cast is first-rate, too. ... But this Roots can’t quite escape the faults of the original. Kunta’s story, the Fiddler’s, and later Chicken George’s, are patterns, and also cycles. They seek dignity, but find only indignity--or abject cruelty--over and over.

This is a more intimate series, with extended looks at the personal relationships of the characters (the connection between Kizzy and her master’s niece, who grew up together, is just one example). It’s also a gorier series—yes, showing all the abuse put to slaves, but also showing many of the perpetrators of that violence getting their comeuppance. Added to flashbacks and spiritually charged dreams, this lends the show an occasional shade of magical realism.

It’s a magnetic production, one that’s filled with precious performances that sparkle.

Though sleeker and more graphically brutal than its ancestor, Roots remains a celebration of resistance through survival.

Overall, the remake, whose producers include Mr. Burton and Mark M. Wolper (whose father, David L. Wolper, produced the original “Roots”), ably polishes the story for a new audience that might find the old production dated and slow.

Roots' greatest service may be in reminding us that, as we blunder through the ugly turmoil of present-day American race relations, we've survived worse.

The new Roots fulfills its primary obligation to be a compelling saga, doing what it can to reflect what the last 40 years have meant to our collective understanding of black history.

The new Roots offers a strong dose of drama--too strong, perhaps, for some viewers who will shy away from scenes of brutality--and compelling character stories.

This Roots isn’t as altogether strongly acted as the 1977 version--though there are still plenty of standouts.... But the unmistakable spiritual dimension, an aspect lacking in the original, compensates, and it comes mainly from the writing and direction.

The miniseries remains difficult to watch, as Kunta Kinte and his descendants keep being victimized by white slave-owners, slave-catchers and land-owners who regard slaves as property, not as men, women and children. But Roots gains in power. Though at times, the story seems to blame the institution of slavery on sadistic white racists, as the miniseries goes on, it makes it clear that slavery remains America's original sin.

An hour or so into the new version, as we see Mandinka warrior Kunta Kinte (Malachi Kirby), so recently a free man, shackled in the hold of a slave ship, it becomes clear that the current version doesn’t have to best the original to be worthwhile.

It’s a technically updated and marvelously acted work for the era of “Black Lives Matter,” a solid dramatic reminder of the complexity and depth of racism in America.

The miniseries is filled with superb, lived-in performances, but especially by Kirby, Page, Rose, Whitaker, and Meyers. The cast (which also includes, at various points, Mekhi Phifer, T.I., Chad L. Coleman, Erica Tazel, Anna Paquin, James Purefoy, Matthew Goode, and Sedale Threatt Jr., among many others) and crew had an impossible task in front of them, and they rose to the challenge.

On a night-by-night basis, Roots works the tricky balance between misery and uplift. Even if it can't tap into the sui generis newness of the original, the miniseries is often brutal and harrowing.

It is packed with towering performances that boldly and magnificently reinterpret characters who have become part of our national folklore.

The lessons the new Roots teaches over the course of its eight hours, which air on four consecutive nights, are worth revisiting, and a number of outstanding performances enliven this retelling of the story of Kunta Kinte and his descendants.

The original “Roots” exposed and drew on the power of truth for millions of Americans. This Roots is an echo of that. It stands small in the great shadow of the original.

While a respectable reimagining of the original, this updated version of “Roots” can’t quite match its almost 40 old year predecessor.

It makes a case for its own existence, thanks to its striking cinematography. ... But Roots' narrative, so groundbreaking in its time, feels lacking in an era in which activists are forcefully reminding us that black lives matters.