Directed by Reginald Nudlin
2017 Biographical Drama
1 hour 58 minutes
From Open Road Films
Starring
Chadwick Boseman
Josh Gad
Kate Hudson
Stewart K. Brown
Dan Stevens
James Cromwell
This is the story of an early civil rights case of Thurgood Marshall who would one day become the first black man to have a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. He would become most famous for his Brown v.s. The Board of Education case that illuminated racial segregation. At the time of this story, Marshall (Boseman) was a young, hotshot lawyer working for the NAACP and running all over the country taking up the legal causes for black people involved in issues where their skin color may become a chief issue.
He joins a young, local, Jewish attorney (Gad) in defending a black man (Brown) accused of raping his white employer (Hudson) and then throwing her off a bridge. Along the way, Marshall is menaced by the town bullies as is his co-counsel, who is beaten up, as much as anything, because he's a Jew.
Thrown in is a smattering of personal stories of the two attorneys. We get two versions of the rape via flashbacks. It doesn't take long to see that the judge (Cromwell) is cruelly tough and the prosecuting attorney (Stevens) is oily. This is, for the most part, a trial movie and at that level the film is unexceptional. In fact, if Marshall were not involved, there would be little interest in this movie because there's nothing particularly compelling about it... and I mean the trial and the film. It's nothing we haven't seen countless times before. The crime itself was done almost verbatim (and much better) in To Kill a Mockingbird.
The acting is uniformly good without anyone knocking it out of the park. I did enjoy the completely captivating 40s period look... I hope Hudson took the makeup, hair and costuming folks out for a gratitude lunch.
There may be some initial interest in buying a ticket but word of mouth is likely to close the deal sooner than the folks here will care for.
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A good 30s movie
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