Film

Harriet

Name: Harriet
Genre: Drama, History
Released: 2019
Cast: Cynthia Erivo, Leslie Odom Jr., Janelle Monáe, Clarke Peters, Vanessa Bell Calloway

Harriet turns Tubman's story into a propulsive, near-mythic escape thriller — candlelit swamps, gunfire, visions treated as divine guidance. Cynthia Erivo anchors it with ferocious, unshowy conviction. It's earnest and stirring rather than art-house austere: a big, accessible history lesson dressed as a chase movie, built to move a packed cinema rather than unsettle it.

TMDb rating

7.3

If you liked this

12 Years a Slave2013

Steve McQueen's unflinching adaptation of Solomon Northup's memoir is the film Harriet's warmth carefully avoids being — it refuses every comforting cutaway, and Chiwetel Ejiofor's performance is devastating in an entirely different register.

But It is genuinely gruelling and sustained, with almost no relief — not something to put on for comfort.

Glory1989

This Civil War drama about the first Black volunteer regiment shares Harriet's interest in dignity forged under impossible pressure, with Denzel Washington's Oscar-winning fury and a finale that still lands like a blow.

But Its battlefield heroics and score sometimes tip into old-fashioned Hollywood grandeur that can feel dated.

Selma2014

Ava DuVernay's MLK drama shares Harriet's instinct: turn a towering historical figure into a tense, tactical, moment-by-moment story of strategy and courage rather than a waxworks tribute.

But It's more procedural and less thriller-paced — the political scenes ask for real patience.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Underground Railroad2021

Same historical engine — enslaved people fleeing north by a hidden network — but Jenkins takes the metaphor Harriet dramatizes and makes it literal, turning escape into a fever dream instead of a thriller.

Barry Jenkins takes the same historical rupture as Harriet and makes it surreal — the Underground Railroad becomes a literal train through literal tunnels, a stunning, dreamlike device for exploring trauma and flight that no straight biopic could attempt.

But It's slow, elliptical and visually demanding — nothing like Harriet's forward-charging pace.

Underground2016no page yet

This Underground Railroad drama plays almost like Harriet's spirit stretched across two seasons — the same cat-and-mouse tension of flight and pursuit, with room to build a whole ensemble of the enslaved and their hunters.

But It was cancelled after two seasons, so you're investing in a story that never fully resolves.

Roots1977

This remake of the landmark miniseries traces slavery across generations with an epic sweep Harriet only has time to gesture at, anchored by strong performances and real production scale.

But Multiple long parts across a whole miniseries is a serious commitment, and the violence is sustained.

Amistad1997

Spielberg's courtroom drama about a slave-ship mutiny shares Harriet's faith that history can be told as gripping, moral cinema, with Morgan Freeman and Anthony Hopkins circling a genuinely tense legal fight.

But The courtroom scenes are talkier and slower than Harriet's chases through the woods.

Marshall2017

Chadwick Boseman plays a young Thurgood Marshall in this brisk legal drama that, like Harriet, turns a civil rights giant's early career into an accessible, crowd-pleasing true story.

But It's a much smaller, more conventional film — don't expect the same visual ambition.

Hidden Figures2016

If you liked Harriet's mix of history lesson and feel-good momentum, this NASA drama about Black women mathematicians delivers the same warm, rousing, based-on-a-true-story energy.

But It's considerably gentler and glossier — the stakes are institutional, not life-and-death.

Lincoln2012

Spielberg's account of passing the 13th Amendment shows the political machinery behind emancipation that Harriet's story runs parallel to — the view from Washington rather than the swamp.

But It's dialogue-heavy political process cinema, a long way from Harriet's momentum and danger.

Django Unchained2012

Both ask what it would take to fight back against slavery's machinery; Harriet answers with faith and cunning, Django answers with a six-shooter and pure pulp fantasy.

Tarantino's spaghetti-western revenge fantasy is set in the same slaveholding South, but rewrites it as blood-soaked wish fulfilment — a gun-toting former slave hunting down his tormentors with total, cathartic impunity.

But It's extremely violent, profane and stylized — the tone couldn't be further from Harriet's earnest reverence.

A Woman Called Moses1978no page yet

It's the direct ancestor of Harriet: the same biography, filmed over forty years earlier, revealing how differently — and how similarly — each era chooses to tell Tubman's story.

Decades before Erivo, Cicely Tyson played Harriet Tubman in this TV movie — a rawer, stagier, more overtly didactic take on the same life, showing how the story has been told and retold across generations.

But The production values and pacing are unmistakably 1970s television — slow, theatrical, occasionally clunky.