Lawyer Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan) has just
graduated from Harvard with a law degree, which means there’s only one clear
course of action to take one. That’s right, Stevenson is going to move down to
Alabama and create a non-profit law firm that specializes in providing free
legal services to death row inmates. It’s a crusade that’s highly unorthodox,
to put it gently, especially considering Stevenson is a Black man trying to
fight against a justice system that inherently sees people of color as immediately
guilt. However, Stevenson wants to use his lawyer's gifts to help the most
underserved of American citizens. After all, these are not inhuman monsters,
but people who could be anybody. Heck, Stevenson himself observes to his Mother
at one point that “It could have been me, Mama”
One of his first clients is Walter McMillian (Jamie
Foxx), a local business owner accused of assaulting and murdering a teenage
white woman. McMillian is claiming his innocence and the evidence used to throw
him on Death Row is as flimsy as you can get. But restoring justice and clearing
McMillian’s name will be a monumental task as Stevenson combats a corrupt
justice system bent on dehumanizing and incarcerating people of color. The fact
that Just Mercy clearly depicts racism as a societally-ingrained woe
rather than just the result of “a few bad apples” is reflective of the
commendably introspective script penned by Destin Daniel Cretton and Andrew
Lanham (the former of whom also directs Just Mercy). It’s a welcome sharp
contrast to how most major studio releases tackling the topic of racial inequality
as well as just an approach that works for this particular story.
Reflecting that reality helps to make the stakes of Just
Mercy’s plot (which also takes place closer to the present, in the early
1990’s, than many period-era stories about American racism) as appropriately
daunting as they are. There isn’t just one racist person to overcome here,
there’s an entire corrupt justice system to confront, we’re dealing with the
ultimate David vs. Goliath tale. To boot, text during the end credits smartly
reaffirms how corrupt racism still reverberates well into the modern-day world.
Just Mercy’s portrait of how powerful forms of racism manifest in
American power structures is appropriately expansive but Just Mercy’s
very best moments tend to come in the form of smaller-scale elements.
Specifically, intimate scenes emphasizing the humanity
of the inmates placed upon death row tend to be the very best parts of Just
Mercy. Quiet sequences depicting Walter McMillian and his two incarcerated
companions, Herbert Richardson (Rob Morgan) and Anthony Ray Hinton (O’Shea
Jackson Jr.), simply talking to one another across their individual jail cells are
extremely poignant. Through moments like McMillian talking Richardson through
calming breathing exercises, we get to see these three treat each other as the
human beings that they are. Much of society may have abandoned this trio of
prisoners, but the thoughtful screenwriting and tender on-screen performances movingly
demonstrates how these prisoners haven’t abandoned by each other. Such softly
powerful and emotionally involving scenes echo similar sequences in the earlier
Destin Daniel Cretton directorial effort Short Term 12, chiefly LaKeith Stanfield’s revealing bongo-drum accompanied song, in how they lend humanity
and distinct personality to individuals that society has cast aside.
Drawing up comparisons to Short Term 12 is
never a bad thing and speaks to just how well Just Mercy realizes the humanity of its most marginalized characters. Said characters get to have equal
footing with Michael B. Jordan’s Bryan Stevenson as the lead of the motion
picture. As for Stevenson, he’s an interesting departure from typical movie
lawyers in how he favors eschewing dramatically pointing to the doorway of the
courtroom to reveal surprise witnesses and other bombastic traits in favor of
a more restrained soft-spoken personality. Though he’s more muted than your
typical movie lawyer, Stevenson is still written to be a distinctly warm
empathetic fellow, the kind of guy whose 110% devotion to doing the right thing
is something you don’t doubt for a second.
That kind of demeanor is extremely well-realized in
the hands of Michael B. Jordan. Right from the get-go in the opening scene of
Just Mercy, which sees college-aged Stevenson interacting with a Death Row
inmate for the first time, Jordan has such naturalism in his interactions with
the prisoners his character bounces off of. Jordan’s gift for having charisma
with everyone he comes into contact with serves this character well, it gives
Bryan Stevenson a friendly quality that doesn’t come off as smarmy or forced. Clearly,
Jordan’s impressive versatility across the likes of Fruitvale Station to
Creed is alive and well here in Just Mercy, but he doesn’t
deliver the best performance of the project.
That honor goes to a two-way tie in the form of Jamie
Foxx and Rob Morgan, both of whom are exceptional in their vastly different
individual roles. The consistently underrated Foxx sheds away any traces of his
prior performances for the role of Walter McMillian and he especially excels in
depicting how McMillian has become hardened after serving two years on death
row for a crime he didn’t commit. There’s a wall around McMillian and Foxx
makes you totally understand why this character has put up that barrier. The
performances and a more expansive approach to tackling systemic racism are the
best parts of Just Mercy, which, like any movie, does have its fair
share of flaws. Most prominent among its issues is a third act that ends up
becoming a more predictable courtroom drama, you can guess all the beats of
this section of the project right down to a big surprise supporter for
Stevenson’s cause. Still, Just Mercy packs a powerful punch thanks to a
far more realistic approach to societally-ingrained racism than you’d normally
see in a major studio release as well as writer/director Destin Daniel Cretton
channeling the empathetic spirit of his previous movie Short Term 12. Oh, and
there’s also an assemblage of strong performances to be found, any movie like Just
Mercy that reminds one of how talented actors like Jamie Foxx and Rob
Morgan are is more than A-OK in my book.
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