Just Mercy: A real-world horror story

Just Mercy (2019) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and racial epithets
By Derrick Bang

Effective advocacy cinema should enlighten, inspire or outrage.

And, in some cases, prompt grief.

Summoned back to court to hear the results of an appeal for a new trial by defense
attorney Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan, left), he and wrongly incarcerated
Death Row inmate Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx) await the judge's announcement.

Director Destin Daniel Cretton’s Just Mercy manages all of the above, and then some. This thoroughly absorbing — and progressively infuriating — drama is an impressively faithful depiction of the jaw-dropping ordeal endured by Walter McMillian, who in June 1987 was arrested for a murder he couldn’t possibly have committed, sentenced to death during a patently absurd trial, and subsequently spent six years on Death Row.

In late 1988, the case came to the attention of freshly minted Harvard lawyer Bryan Stevenson, newly arrived in Alabama to partner with Eva Ansley, with whom he’d co-found the Equal Justice Initiative. (Since 1994, the Republican-controlled Alabama has been the only state that refuses to provide legal assistance to death row prisoners.)

Stevenson’s growing involvement in McMillian’s nightmare fuels the drama in Cretton’s film; he co-wrote the script with Andrew Lanham, based on Stevenson’s 2014 memoir of the same title. The result is must-see cinema, thanks also to powerhouse performances from Michael B. Jordan (Stevenson) and Jamie Foxx (McMillian), along with equally solid work from a roster of shrewdly cast supporting players.

At its core, this saga is about repugnant racism, corruption and the hideous abuse of power by smugly arrogant white men who know they can get away with anything. The villains in this drama are headed by Michael Harding’s chilling portrayal of Sheriff Tom Tate, who — as the film opens — has been under mounting pressure to find the person who shot and killed 18-year-old dry-cleaning clerk Ronda Morrison (white, of course) on November 1, 1986.

For reasons this film never makes clear — partly because there didn’t seem to bea reason — seven months later Tate arrests McMillian, a pulpwood worker shown felling trees in a brief sequence prior to the fateful traffic stop. (The poetic image of blue sky shimmering through gently wafting pine needles, as McMillian glances reverently heavenward, will prove important later.) Tate’s choice seems governed solely by his belief that McMillian looks like a black guy who’d gun down a helpless white woman.

This arrest, surrounded by white cops with rifles and pistols drawn, gives Harding his first flat-out scary moment. (Several others will follow, the actor often radiating lethal menace without saying a word.)

During the subsequent kangaroo court — prior to Stevenson’s arrival on the scene — McMillian is found guilty on the basis of obviously fabricated testimony by career criminals looking to lighten their own sentences. Counter-testimony by numerous friends and family members, placing McMillian at a fish fry miles away when the murder was committed, is completely ignored. 

Despite a total lack of physical evidence, he’s sentenced to life in prison; one month later, in a dubious legal maneuver unique to Alabama — “Judge Override” — the death penalty is imposed by a judge ironically named Robert E. Lee Key (played with condescending self-righteousness by Stephen Wyatt Nelson).

But that isn’t the ultimate irony. In one of the best “truth is stranger than fiction” moments God ever orchestrated, these events take place in Monroeville, best known as the home of the late Harper Lee, who set To Kill a Mockingbird in these very surroundings: a detail proclaimed proudly to Stevenson, once he arrives — as a rare touch of this script’s dark humor — by several blandly clueless locals who seem not to understand the novel’s message.

The immaculately dressed Stevenson’s reception by Monroeville’s white residents is straight out of the playbook established by director Norman Jewison’s 1967 adaptation of In the Heat of the Night, when Sidney Poitier’s equally proud and polished Virgil Tibbs lands in Sparta, Mississippi. Reactions range from suspicion and cold indifference, to blatantly aggressive hostility.

This is, perhaps, an example of scripted overkill. With the exception of Brie Larson’s Eva Ansley and Dominic Bogart’s handling of her husband Doug, this story has absolutely no “good” white characters; they’re all unapologetic racists and/or bastards. These events wouldn’t be any less powerful, if the racial divide weren’t so extreme. (Alternatively, if this is an accurate depiction of Monroeville, God help them all.)

Larson and Cretton have worked together since 2013’s Short Term 12, set in a residential treatment facility; she excelled in his 2017 handling of The Glass Castle, based on Jeannette Walls’ astonishing memoir. Larson’s work here is quiet but confident; she’s every inch a dedicated social worker motivated by a strong sense of justice. She’s also a nurturing presence, and not merely because she and Doug share a young son; at Stevenson’s worst moments, Ansley is a steadfast rock on which he can lean.

The racial dynamic, and the film’s tone, are set during Stevenson’s arrival at Holman State Prison — interiors and exteriors meticulously re-created by production designer Sharon Seymour — where he expects to meet his first clients (one of whom will be McMillian). These interviews are postponed briefly by a bit of business orchestrated by a young guard, Jeremy (Hayes Mercure), determined to establish dominance.

Jordan’s reaction to this — his expression radiating surprise, disbelief, pride, shame and carefully controlled fury — is a masterpiece of wordless acting.

The best is yet to come, during numerous conferences between Jordan and Foxx. The latter initially makes McMillian aloof and unwelcoming; he’s been down this road before, with attorneys who promised much and delivered nothing. Foxx deftly adopts a wary, hunted and resentful bearing; who is this young-snot Harvard defender? On Death Row, hope is psychologically dangerous, and something to be avoided.

Jordan, in turn, remains respectful, solicitous, insistent and confident. Stevenson radiates calm and patience, to McMillian’s circumspect bearing. Indeed, Foxx seems to have shrunk into himself.

The enormity of this miscarriage of justice becomes clear after Stevenson visits McMillian’s family and friends (an eye-opening encounter punctuated by plenty of iced tea).

Cretton and Lanham further establish the cruel oxymoron of “Alabama justice” via McMillian’s two closest Death Row cellmates, who also become Stevenson’s clients: Herbert Richardson (Rob Morgan), a psychologically damaged Vietnam veteran whose so-called attorney never bothered to introduce PTSD as a viable defense; and Anthony Ray Hinton (O’Shea Jackson Jr.), also apparently railroaded. These three men have forged a bond as other prisoners, over time, have taken that long walk to the room with the electric chair.

Hinton remains little more than a presence, but Richardson gets plenty of screen time; Morgan’s performance is quietly heartbreaking. They’re both overshadowed by Tim Blake Nelson’s stunning performance as Ralph Myers, whose testimony was the state’s entire case against McMillian. Nelson is all tics, twitches and sly, fox-like movements … but it’s not quite that simple. His initially crafty bravado dissolves unexpectedly into the submissive dread of a dog that has been beaten too frequently.

We halfway expect Nelson to sport a tail, that he can tuck between his legs.

Rafe Spall is insufferably smug as Monroeville’s current district attorney, Tommy Chapman, who disdains “justice” in favor of a knee-jerk determination to “uphold the conviction to protect the community.” Spall’s smirk is palpable when Chapman resorts to that excuse in the face of Stevenson’s insistence that he should “seek the truth.”

In a film laden with grim moments, none is more unsettling than Stevenson’s discovery, early on, that Chapman and Sheriff Tate are good ol’ buddies; Jordan’s dismay is palpable.

I wish Mercure were a slightly better actor, because Jeremy is this story’s rare character who evolves; alas, Mercure remains too stoic to really sell this gradual transformation (although Cretton gives him plenty of opportunity). I also wish Cretton trusted his other actors, and refrained from so many tight-tight-tight close-ups. They become tedious and superfluous, particularly when Jordan, Foxx and the others are so capable of selling their scenes.

The progress of McMillian’s saga becomes increasingly Kafkaesque — as if it weren’t bad enough to begin with — and our reaction builds to righteous indignation. To his credit, Cretton doesn’t exploit this story’s saddest and most uncomfortable sequence, which elicited strong viewer reaction during Monday evening’s preview screening.

Indeed, Cretton’s touch throughout is calm and methodical. Where too many directors would treat this material with shrill overkill, he lets the events speak for themselves.

Despite some welcome explanatory text blocks immediately prior to the end credits, we don’t get closure on the elephant in the room: Who did kill Ronda Morrison? To this day, the crime remains unsolved; it would have been nice, had Cretton so informed us.

But that and the other caveats are minor. This is a powerful, memorable and important film. (And I doubt it’ll do anything to enhance Alabama’s tourism.)