20 Movie Characters Who Never Got The Comeuppance They Deserved
8. 12 Years A Slave - Solomon's Kidnappers
As said earlier, when we go to the movies, we love to see the villains get their just desserts. One of the reasons for this is that it distracts from a sad, inescapable truth: in real life, bad people don't always get what they deserve. Sometimes, they get away scot-free. 12 Years a Slave is based on a true story, and that's exactly the case here.
At the start of 12 Years a Slave, two men approach Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free black man and violinist living in New York. He's approached by two white men who offer him a new, short-term position as a musician in Washington, D.C., but it's all a cover. At dinner, these insidious sickos drug Solomon and then sell him off into slavery - it's 12 years before he's finally freed.
As the movie's closing titles relate, Solomon tried to get these kidnappers charged, but the court case dragged out for two years and was eventually dropped altogether. He also tried to charge the man that he was sold to, but back then, black people weren't allowed to testify in court in Washington, D.C., so that man was ultimately acquitted. This is a final, cruel detail that makes an already harrowing film even more gut-wrenching.