“JUST MERCY” — 3 stars — Brie Larson, Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Foxx, Rafe Spall, Tim Blake Nelson, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Herbert Richardson; PG-13 (thematic content including some racial epithets); in general release; 136 minutes
Destin Daniel Cretton’s “Just Mercy” tells a compelling story, but feels like it falls short of its potential.
Based on the real-life experiences of attorney Bryan Stevenson, “Just Mercy” is a legal drama about the plight of a wrongly convicted inmate on death row in Alabama.
The film opens with a brief prologue, which shows Monroeville, Alabama, freelance laborer Walter McMillan (Jamie Foxx) arrested for the murder of an 18-year-old white woman. Fast forward a bit, and we meet Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan), an idealistic young attorney out of Harvard who has chosen to focus his career on serving the underserved. Specifically, he wants to open a law office that offers legal representation to death row inmates.
Stevenson has the support of a local woman named Eva Ansley (Brie Larson), but his career path compounds the already tense racial dynamic in Monroeville with the fear that his work will put violent and dangerous criminals back in the community. Such is the concern of prosecutor Tommy Chapman (Rafe Spall), Stevenson’s courtroom foe.
Despite the warnings, Stevenson moves forward, and eventually meets McMillan. It is apparent right away that McMillan’s case has serious flaws, and is based almost entirely on the dubious testimony of a suspect witness named Ralph Myers (Tim Blake Nelson), who just happens to be in prison on a murder charge of his own.
On the surface, getting McMillan’s charges dropped seems like a straightforward proposal, but as Stevenson moves to help his client, he discovers the acute level of prejudice and anger that drives the community, even as they celebrate their heritage as the hometown of “To Kill a Mockingbird” author Harper Lee. Ansley gets threatening phone calls for crossing racial lines, and even as a legal professional, Stevenson suffers the indignities of prejudice when he’s forced to endure an unnecessary strip search the first time he visits death row.
Behind bars, we see McMillan interact with his fellow condemned inmates, and we also see the impact his imprisonment has on his family, including his three children. McMillan’s story has enough twists and turns to keep things unpredictable, even as the pace seems to drag a bit in places.
The sum total of the effort is good with a small “g,” mainly because the caliber of talent involved keeps you wondering what could have been. While “Just Mercy” checks the requisite boxes, it feels like it doesn’t quite deliver the material to truly make use of Jordan and Foxx’s considerable talents, and the audience never quite feels the weight of the drama to the level that feels possible.
While the main plot focuses on McMillan’s vindication, it’s also clear that a secondary intent of Cretton’s film is to criticize the death penalty policy in general. But while a subplot about a fellow convict named Rob Morgan (Herbert Richardson) is moving, just as with the film in general, the argument feels too thinly developed.
Overall, “Just Mercy” is just good enough of a legal drama to get you to think about its subject, but it’s not a good enough movie to stick with you far beyond the theater doors.
Rating explained: “Just Mercy” is PG-13 due to some scattered profanity and adult themes, including a discreet but emotionally weighted execution scene.