Just Mercy review: in another year, and another film, Jamie Foxx would have walked off with an Oscar
Dir: Destin Daniel Cretton; Starring: Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Foxx, Brie Larson, Tim Blake Nelson, Rafe Spall, Rob Morgan, O'Shea Jackson Jr. 12A cert, 137 mins
Michael B. Jordan launched his acting career playing a tragic street kid called Wallace, murdered when he becomes an informant, in Season One of HBO's The Wire. Since then, discounting the odd blip like Fantastic Four, he has committed himself with impressive pugnacity to one of the most politically interesting careers since Denzel Washington started out. His trilogy of films with Ryan Coogler – Fruitvale Station, Creed and Black Panther – make a huge range of points about black victimhood and heroism, scratching lines in unpredictable places between the two.
Just Mercy, which Jordan produced as well as starring in, is his squarest bid yet to make a social-issue campaigning drama, by exploring the real-life career of a lawyer and activist called Bryan Stevenson, who set up his own practice to appeal against dubious murder convictions for clients on Death Row. It picks one in particular: the case of Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx), a married woodworker from Alabama who was arrested in 1988 on sketchy evidence for the murder of an 18-year-old white girl, Ronda Morrison.
The theme of a lawyer fighting in the Southern courthouses to acquit a wrongly accused black client of murder is bound to conjure memories of To Kill a Mockingbird, but the parallels are more than vague: this case was actually tried in Monroeville, AL, where Harper Lee lived and wrote her novel, and whose courtroom was used as the model for the 1962 Gregory Peck film.
When Stevenson turns up to challenge McMillian’s conviction, he gets little co-operation from the courthouse staff, but they repeatedly suggest he finish off his visit by dropping in on the Heritage Museum – a civil rights landmark, they proudly claim – where he can even step “where Atticus Finch once stood”.
You can imagine how this goes down. Jordan isn’t here to be compared unfavourably with anyone’s fictional white saviour, and becomes sure that McMillian’s conviction was obtained with false testimony thanks to the unexamined racism of all involved.
The culprits include Sheriff Tom Tate (Michael Harding), an old-school cracker who lets the N-word slip, alongside the recently appointed DA (Rafe Spall), a pseudo-affable windbag who patronises Stevenson and is slow to admit what doesn’t add up. This is the eyewitness testimony of one Ralph Myers (Tim Blake Nelson), himself a murder convict with mental health issues, who was clearly coerced into identifying McMillian with dangled promises of early release.
Watching Stevenson break this case wide open ought to make Just Mercy a crackling yarn, like real-life Grisham with the racial indignation dialled up. It’s the crackle that’s missing. Destin Daniel Cretton (Short Term 12, The Glass Castle) directs in a way you could call thuddingly honourable, with a colour palette that’s literally beige, a gospel-inflected jazz score that’s sleepy and dawdling, and editing choices that keep missing the urgency of this life-or-death fight.
Brie Larson’s supporting role as an understanding sidekick is theoretically cut from the same cloth as Sandra Bullock in A Time to Kill, but her version is ruthlessly woke, hoovering up brownie points and needless chunks of the runtime.
While politically unimpeachable, Just Mercy is simply too lethargic to be the major awards race player Warner Bros. were evidently hoping for. It’s a pity for Jordan, who has steel and energy in his part, and an especial shame for Foxx, who gives a beautifully modulated, unflashy and quietly moving performance, easily his best in at least a decade.
In another year – and in a film more galvanising and awake – he might be walking off with Best Supporting Actor and deserving every plaudit coming his way. As it stands, he’s wonderful, and Jordan’s good, in trudgingly average surroundings.
