In “The Good Lord Bird,” Ethan Hawke plays John Brown, the marauding abolitionist whose crusade to free Black people from slavery helped set off the Civil War. He’s a bellowing, scripture-quoting, trigger-happy zealot whose blind obsession with his cause often plays as comedy. He’s seen through the skeptical eyes of an enslaved boy, the story’s fictional narrator, Henry, played by 15-year-old Joshua Caleb Johnson. Brown mistakes Henry for a girl and hauls him along on his mission as a talisman of holy righteousness, nicknaming...

Source: Wall Street Journal October 04, 2020 20:26 UTC