Written by Alyssa Solis, Staff Writer
Just Mercy has already made history by being the first major studio film to include an inclusion rider and diversity program. An inclusion rider is a contract by a director or actor which demands that there is diversity in the hiring practices. Actor Michael B. Jordan, the villain in Black Panther, makes it clear that he wants to see people like him represented in the films he acts in.
It’s very fitting for a movie based on an incredibly awed, and racist, justice system.
For those who haven’t taken AP Literature and Composition, Just Mercy is a movie adaptation of an autobiography by Bryan Stevenson. The book is a collage of cases a young, broke, and aspiring lawyer takes on to help people who cannot afford the representation they deserve.
Every other chapter continues the story of one of Stevenson’s biggest and most moving court case featuring a man wrongly put on death row due to racism and the town’s need to close a tragic unsolved murder of a young woman. The other chapters contain other moving cases of Stevenson’s that expose more than just racism in the awed justice system.
My biggest gripe with the movie is the cuts in the beginning. They made me slightly disoriented and failed to immerse me into the story. They also falsely made me think the filmmakers were going to discuss Stevenson’s other cases in detail, which they don’t. If they had, I would’ve understood the need for cuts, but they were completely unnecessary in this case.
Additionally, the first chapter of the book that made the reader feel for Stevenson was missing, so the movie fails to connect the viewer with Stevenson. Why should the audience follow a story told by someone they don’t care about?
The film also has a racist prison guard whose character develops very little and doesn’t have much to do with Stevenson at all, whereas in the book it was due to Stevenson’s mercy.
All the negatives aside, the movie is well choreographed, with fantastic acting that made me relive Herb’s execution for the second time since reading the book. I had to force myself not to cry. The movie does a fantastic job showing the cruelty and reality of the death penalty as well as exposing modern racism, especially with the large margin of error that exists. At the end of the movie, it states the fact that one out of nine people on death row are innocent.
The soundtrack is incredibly fitting and adds a lot to the scenes at hand. The silence also works dramatic wonders. Additionally, the cinematography is gorgeous and exactly what I envisioned the atmospheres to be.
In no means is this a terrible movie, but it’s a lot less moving than the book and leaves out a huge chunk of Stevenson’s purpose in writing his autobiography. It would’ve done his work more justice had it been a television series. This would’ve adequately given the story enough time and would’ve been more impactful, especially to an audience who hasn’t read the book. Although since the advertising wasn’t well done, I highly doubt most people who went to see it saw it based purely on the trailer.
Overall, I give the movie a 3 out of 5 stars.