Movie Review: Just Mercy

Just Mercy *** / *****

Directed by: Destin Daniel Cretton.

Written by: Destin Daniel Cretton and Andrew Lanham based on the memoir by Bryan Stevenson.

Starring:  Michael B. Jordan (Bryan Stevenson), Jamie Foxx (Walter McMillian), Brie Larson (Eva Ansley), Tim Blake Nelson (Ralph Myers), Rafe Spall (Tommy Champan), O'Shea Jackson Jr. (Anthony Ray Hinton), Claire Bronson (Mrs. Chapman), Darrell Britt-Gibson (Darnell Houston), Rob Morgan (Herbert Richardson), Drew Scheid (Linus), Tonea Stewart (Mrs. Coleman), Rhoda Griffis (Judge Pamela Bachab), Denitra Isler (Evelyn), Steve Coulter (Judge Buren), Karan Kendrick (Minnie McMillian), Lindsay Ayliffe (Judge Foster), Michael Harding (Sheriff Tate), C.J. LeBlanc (John McMillian). 

 

It’s hard not to think of To Kill a Mockingbird when watching Just Mercy – and not just because it takes place in Monroeville, Alabama, home of Harper Lee, and several characters tells protagonist Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan) that he should visit the Mockingbird Museum – it being “one of the great Civil Rights landmarks in the South). It’s because the story told here, set in the late 1980s and early 1990s, about Stevenson, an idealist, Harvard educated lawyer from Delaware, who comes to Alabama to work with Death Row inmates who are mostly poor, mostly black, and some event innocent, hits those Mockingbird notes so heavily that it’s clear that co-writer/director Destin Daniel Cretton wants you to think of To Kill a Mockingbird, the book and the movie with Gregory Peck throughout.

 

I don’t think that comparison helps Just Mercy very much. For one thing, as good as Michael B. Jordan is here – and he’s very good, and there are times you sense he wants to take his character in a more interesting, darker direction than the movie allows, he isn’t Gregory Peck in Mockingbird – a towering performance, and a prototype for this type of role. For another, Peck’s Mockingbird came out in 1962, Lee’s novel earlier, and for its time and place, it was daring. But this is 2019, and yet for the most part, Just Mercy plays like a movie that could have made at any time since the Civil Rights movement. It isn’t particularly daring, it isn’t particularly challenging, and it’s the type of film about black suffering that lets everyone off the hook. The racist bad guys are clearly racist – so white viewers aren’t going to question their own actions. There is a lot of talk about the system here, but I don’t think the film does a particularly good job of depicting systematic racism – the racism that results in more black and brown people on Death Row in the first place. It is a film about white racism, that lets white people off the hook – even the prison guard in the film who exerts his petty power to punish Stevenson when he first enters the prison, comes around after he gets to know some black people, perhaps for the first time.

 

We’ve seen all of this before – and yet, in the hands of Cretton and Jordan and Jamie Foxx – as Walter McMillian, a man sentenced to death for a crime he clearly didn’t commit, even as the film hits all the clichés we know it’s going to hit, it still works. Jordan has become one of the best, and certainly most charming, of actors working in American film today – and he’s very good here, whether he’s being a sympathetic ear for McMillian’s family, or delivering arguments in court, or watching another of his clients (a man who is guilty) die in the electric chair. It’s the type of role that Denzel Washington in the 1980s or ‘90s would do – or Sidney Poitier in the 1960s – and Jordan plays it very well. There are moments where you sense Jordan wants to go farther here – wants to tap into the black anger that made his performance in Black Panther so good, so conflicted. But that may take the character, and the movie, into some places that would make the white audience uncomfortable – so the film doesn’t go there. Foxx is better – particularly early – when he believes there is no hope for him, when the system is rigged against him. He’s also quite good later, in the more clichéd scenes this story requires – but it’s those early scenes I remember.

 

And yet, the film may be better in its depiction of smaller character. Brie Larson, who real breakthrough role was in Cretton’s great Short Term 12, is wasted here as Stevenson’s co-worker, although she’s such a good actress she still leaves an impression in the way she carries herself, the way she smokes a cigarette, etc. Sheriff Tate (Michael Harding), the man responsible for McMillian’s arrest, is a one note villain, and the D.A. Tommy Chapman (Rafe Spall), who wasn’t in office when McMillian was convicted, but now defends the trial, isn’t much better. But the two best characters – and perhaps performances – in the film are more minor characters. Tim Blake Nelson is typically great as Ralph Myers – a poor white man, a career criminal, and the only real witness or evidence against McMillian – whose story is so ridiculous no one should have believed it. He is all false bravado at first, and you are prepared to hate him – but gradually, you see him as a victim as well – the system uses and abuses poor people of all colors. And Rob Morgan is truly exceptional as Herbert Richardson – another of the Death Row inmates, and one who is guilty – he planted a bomb that killed a young woman. Stevenson takes his case anyway, and tries to get a stay – Richardson was a Vietnam vet, with mental health issues stemming from the war – circumstances that were not brought up, but perhaps could have lessened his sentenced. Morgan only has a few scenes – but you will remember him, his slow, stuttering talk, and his final moments long after the rest of the movie fades.

 

Just Mercy works on its own terms, I guess. I just wish it had more ambition – that it recognized the way things have changed since To Kill a Mockingbird, and took more chances – even if it means making a thornier movie with less mass (white) appeal. There are moments here where you see what this film could have been – and I wish would have been.

Movie Review: Short Term 12

Short Term 12
Directed by: Destin Cretton.
Written by: Destin Cretton.
Starring: Brie Larson (Grace), John Gallagher Jr. (Mason), Kaitlyn Dever (Jayden), Stephanie Beatriz (Jessica), Rami Malek (Nate), Alex Calloway (Sammy), Kevin Hernandez (Luis), Lydia Du Veaux (Kendra), Keith Stanfield (Marcus), Frantz Turner (Jack).

There are few movie characters that wormed their way into my heart as fully and completely as Grace does in Short Term 12. Like most movie characters that end up doing so, Grace is not a character who begs for attention or love. From the beginning of the film, Grace seems like a person who has everything together – but you can tell she is, in part, putting up a façade and that she is truly hurting inside. Many movies make the mistake of thinking that characters that filmmakers want us to love need to act like hyperactive puppy dogs, begging for affection. Grace – and for that matter the rest of the characters in Short Term 12 – never do that. And that made me love them even more.

The movie takes place at a group home for teenagers. They’re only supposed to be there for a year or less, but many have no place to go and end up spending longer than that there – only being released when they’re 18, and therefore no longer the state’s problem. They have doctors and therapists and administrators – the people who are supposed to monitor the kids and look out for them – but the day-to-day responsibilities fall mainly to the young floor staff. They are the ones who spend hours with the kids every day – and whose basic job description is to keep them busy, out of trouble and on the grounds. If they’re on the grounds, the staff can control them – tackle them and hold them if need be – but if anyone is able to break free to the street, then the staff cannot touch them.

Grace (Brie Larson) is one of the floor staff. We see her in the film’s first scene listening to her boyfriend Mason (John Gallagher Jr.), another staff member, tell a story she has heard many, many times before – about the day he had follow one of their charges all around town after he broke free, which would be bad enough by itself, but is made much worse by the fact that Mason has diarrhea that day. The story is for the benefit of Nate (Rami Malek), a new staff member, as a way to break the ice, and get him laughing, before they have to deal with the kids at hand – one of whom comes storming out as if on cue, and the staff have to tackle him. Just another day at the office.

Throughout the course of the film, we’ll get to know some of the kids at the home – including smartass Luis (Kevin Hernandez) and the sad, quiet Sammy (Alex Calloway), whose life revolves around the dolls he has to replace his sister (where she is, we never find out). Two eventually come into better focus – Marcus (Keith Stanfield), who is on the verge of 18 and so will soon have to leave, who is quiet and brooding – but in one of the film’s most memorable scenes, delivers a rap that lets you know just how deep his pain is, and how he ended up at the home in the first place. The second is a new arrival – Jayden (Kaitlyn Dever) – a 16 year old girl, whose mother died a few years ago, and has been giving her dad a hard time ever since. Unlike the rest of the kids, her dad is still in her life – but cannot deal with his daughter full time anymore. Jayden is angry at the world and isn’t shy about letting everyone know it. She also drags up the past for Grace – already reeling when she discovers she’s pregnant.

Short Term 12 doesn’t have much of a plot – or at least not one you really notice while you’re watching it. Looking back over the film now, it becomes clear just how structured the film is, but while I was watching the film, I was caught up in the day-to-day lives of these characters – the acting being a big reason why. Larson has been an emerging actress for a while now – she was one of my favorite parts of last year’s 21 Jump Street, and had great supporting roles in two other indies this year – as Miles Teller’s girlfriend who dumps him in The Spectacular Now and as Joseph Gordon Levitt’s all but silent sister in Don Jon – three films where she took what could have been nothing roles, and left an impression (particularly in The Spectacular Now, where her character is much deeper than she first appears). But her performance here takes her to another level. It is a natural performance, where she plays a character worried about being hurt, so she plays her cards close to her vest. She doesn’t let anyone in, because she’s scared of being hurt again. Many movies have their characters keep secrets from those around them – and the audience – for no reason other than it’s convenient for the plot, but in Short Term 12, Grace’s reluctance to talk feels natural and real. It is a brilliant performance – one of the best of the year – and anchors the movie.

The rest of the performances are quite good as well – in particular those by Stanfield as Marcus and Dever as Jayden, who play damaged kids who we still cannot help but root for. Gallagher is perhaps a little too perfect as Mason – he doesn’t seem to have any flaws at all – and yet it didn’t bother me very much (in part, I think, because more often than not, it’s a flawed, complicated male lead, with a seemingly perfect girlfriend who helps them through, so the role reversal felt refreshing, rather than clichéd).

Written and directed by Destin Cretton, Short Term 12 is one of the best Indies of the year – a film that goes deeper than most Indies, which concentrate on teenagers with overbearing parents and the malaise of suburbia. The characters in Short Term 12 wish they had those problems.