Mark Reviews Movies: JUST MERCY

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 9, 2020

The big attraction in Monroeville, Alabama, is what the locals call the "Mockingbird Museum." Harper Lee grew up here. Her childhood in this town during the 1930s inspired her to write To Kill a Mockingbird. The old courthouse, where her attorney father often argued the law, is now a tribute to Lee and especially her book. "You can stand where Atticus Finch stood," one local proudly proclaims. "It's one of the great civil rights landmarks of the 20th century," another beams.

There's some terrible irony to the way that the people of this town and its surrounding county wear the legacy of Lee's novel like a badge of honor in Just Mercy. It's as if they believe they're immune from any liability. They brag about the book and its impact on society, and since it originated from one of their own and this place, nothing else that has happened before or since really matters. After seeing how the police and the government and the citizens of this town assume the guilt of a black man, even after ample evidence is presented in court to prove his innocence, one wonders if these folks actually learned the lesson of the book—or, for that matter, even bothered to read it in the first place.

The connection to Lee's novel is raised early and often during the first act of this film, co-written and directed by Destin Daniel Cretton. The irony, of course, is part of the reason, but the other reason, perhaps, is that it's an act of passing the baton. The story here also deals with a lawyer—an idealistic man, who sees prejudice and bias in the law and among the everyday words and actions of people. He sees these obstacles to justice, yet he perseveres, because doing the right thing is always the right thing do. People, especially the socially and legally disenfranchised, need an ally, and few are willing to step up to that challenge.

Here's a film that presents a modern-day hero. While the subject of people wrongly and/or hastily placed on death row is one of dreadful dismay, there is, at least, some comfort in knowing that there are people like Bryan Stevenson in the world, doing the work that only a few are willing and able to do.

The story does indeed come from Stevenson's book (adapted by Cretton and Andrew Lanham), and the lawyer, who still works for those on death row, served as an executive producer on the film. Some might see this adaptation, in which the attorney is presented as a noble champion of justice, as a form of self-aggrandizement. Those people can keep their cynicism to themselves.

We seem to have so few heroes these days, and it's encouraging to see one get his due in a mainstream film. It's also heartening to see a mainstream film deal with issues such as racial bias in the legal system and the inherent cruelty of capital punishment in such a straightforward and thoughtful way.

In the film, Bryan is played by Michael B. Jordan as a soft-spoken graduate of Harvard Law School—intelligent, compassionate, certain that he should at least try to make some change in the world, if only one person at a time. Starting up a small non-profit with the aid of local advocate Eva Ansley (Brie Larson), Bryan begins to provide legal counsel, free of charge, to any death row inmate willing to accept.

Even before he can start working, though, Bryan faces assorted challenges, which persist and increase as the story proceeds—from a humiliating strip search at the prison (traditionally waived for attorneys), to a district attorney (played by Rafe Spall) who brushes off Bryan's requests for documents, to someone calling in a bomb threat to Eva's home, to an unwarranted and threatening stop by the police on a county road at night.

The bulk of the story is devoted to Bryan advocating for two clients, although a montage of faces, each with a story about a rushed trial or an uncaring public defenders or the dismissal of exonerating evidence, paints the picture of a legal system that is uncaring toward justice and actively set against certain people—black, poor, mentally unwell. Those two clients are, primarily, Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx)—who was convicted of the 1986 murder of a white woman, despite a solid alibi and the questionable testimony of alleged accomplice Ralph Myers (Tim Blake Nelson)—and Herbert Richardson (Rob Morgan).

Herbert's story presents an angle that most stories about and essentially against the death penalty often ignore. He's a Vietnam veteran, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, who admits the crime of leaving a pipe bomb that killed a girl.

Walter's story, about a man who is clearly innocent, is the easy case to be made against capital punishment, but Herbert's presents a different moral argument, tied to his mental health issues, yes, but also founded upon the fundamental notion that the life of a person has worth. If Walter's story is the pragmatic argument and eventually inspiring case of justice being done (not for victim, tragically, because the prejudices and biases of the legal system hit both ways in the end), Herbert provides the harsh reality of the death penalty.

Cretton tells this story clearly and directly, with the support of some strong performances (Foxx and Morgan are noticeably effective, but Jordan unassumingly imbues Bryan with quiet compassion and simmering outrage). Just Mercy may seem like a familiar tale (which unintentionally might be the most damning indictment of capital punishment), but it's elevated by its protagonist, a good man doing good because that is all any of us can do.

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