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.
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| 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.)
