Statistics about the social mobility of Black lives don’t always do justice to what it looks like up close for one person. That’s where movies come in handy as vessels of understanding and, in “Rob Peace,” a dramatization about a real-life Yale student whose trajectory defies easy categorization, writer-director Chiwetel Ejiofor (following up his impressive 2019 directing debut, “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind” ) proves more earnest than skillful at bringing heartfelt complexity to another tale of whiz-kid promise and resourcefulness. Growing up in a blighted section of East Orange, N.
J., 7-year-old Rob (Jelani Dacres) shows a flair for numbers, a gift his aspirational single mom, Jackie (a strong Mary J. Blige ), who works three jobs, wants to see nurtured in private school and college.
But spending time with his big-hearted, drug-dealing dad, Skeet (Ejiofor) introduces this observant boy to the realities of survival in an underserved community. “You look out for people, they look out for you,” he tells him. Both systems of individual progress — a mother’s hope for escape, a father’s belief in reaching behind you on the way up — are put to the test after Skeet is sent to prison for murder when Peace is still a boy establishing his academic prowess.
Though he sails his way through a supportive prep school and gets accepted to Yale with a free ride, Peace (Jay Will takes over the role in adolescence), who dives into molecular biology with dreams of curi.