PLOT: A young Harvard Law grad (Michael B. Jordan) puts his career on the line to set up shop in Alabama, where he dedicates himself to defending death row inmates. He takes on the case of Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx), an African-American man unfairly railroaded into a death sentence for the murder of a white woman.
REVIEW: JUST MERCY tells the true story of attorney Bryan Stevenson, who, throughout his career, has saved 125 men from the death penalty. Directed by SHORT TERM 12’s Destin Daniel Cretton, who’s also slated to direct Marvel’s SHANG CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS, this is a major awards play for all involved. Certainly, it’s a crowd-pleaser that should be a solid hit at the box office following its late 2019 release (it’s due to go wide in January 2020).
Cretton’s move towards the mainstream following his incredible debut has produced mixed results, with THE GLASS CASTLE criticized by many as uneven. While this does prove to be an issue in this over-long legal drama, JUST MERCY is ultimately a far more consistent film, helped along by a few terrific performances and an interesting true story.
Walter McMillian, played by Jamie Foxx, is an interesting person to hang the story on, being a relatably flawed hero. Too often movies like this try to make the victims at their center saintly figures. Here, he’s a bit more layered than the norm, with his past as a known adulterer (with a white woman – a taboo in 1987 Alabama) painting a big target on his back for the cops who set him up, under pressure to close a long-unsolved case. Foxx is excellent, conveying McMillian’s flaws and frustrations but ultimate strength in the face of injustice.
He’s the one who’ll likely walk away from JUST MERCY with the lion’s share of critical raves. By contrast, Michael B. Jordan’s character, Stevenson, is a true blue hero, so good and pure that he seems like he walked out of a Frank Capra movie. It’s an adoring portrait of a guy who certainly deserves a lot of credit, but as a result, Jordan has less to chew on than Foxx, making his role seem one dimensional by contrast. It’s also puzzling that Brie Larson signed on for such a tiny part as the woman who helps Stevenson run the Equal Justice Initiative, with her hiding under an unflattering hairstyle and only having a handful of scenes, none of them of much consequence. If you’re going to cast someone like Larson, at least give the part some weight.
This makes JUST MERCY perhaps more of a mixed bag than anticipated walking into this year’s TIFF, but it’s nonetheless an intriguing true story with a few really solid supporting roles, including a gem for Tim Blake Nelson. He plays the conscience-stricken convicted murderer whose testimony put McMillian on death row, and, like Foxx, he’s allowed to play a layered, imperfect person who, nonetheless has significant redeeming qualities. Rob Morgan is also terrific as a death row inmate suffering from PTSD from his time in Vietnam, giving us a perspective on why some unquestionably guilty inmates should still be treated with a measure of compassion. O’Shea Jackson Jr., is also impressive as another railroaded inmate, Anthony Ray Hinton, whose own life story could give this a juicy sequel should this be a huge success.
While not top tier as far as this year’s crop of TIFF premieres goes, JUST MERCY is still an accessible and entertaining, if overstuffed, true story that should be well-received by audiences. If anything, it proves that Jamie Foxx is among most underrated guys in the biz and should still keep getting the great leading roles he deserves.