Film Review: JUST MERCY (2019): An Eye-Opening Drama That’s Worth a Watch

Just Mercy Review

Just Mercy (2019) Film Review, a movie directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, and starring Jamie Foxx, Michael B. Jordan, Rob Morgan, Tim Blake Nelson, Rafe Spall, and Brie Larson.

Just Mercy has been in theaters for a few months by now and, while it never hit number one at the box office, it did earn a respectable $39 million. Here’s the thing though — sometimes a good movie might not make number one, but you need to look beyond the numbers when declaring a movie a success. While the big wigs at the production company will care more about the bottom line, of course, sometimes it’s just as important to let viewers know that there’s a movie worth watching regardless of where it sits on the Top 10. Just Mercy is that movie. 

The Academy Awards are once again abuzz because of the lack of diversity in its nominations. Many felt that Jamie Foxx, who portrayed Walter “Johnny D” McMillian, an Alabama black man who was wrongly accused in the murder of an 18-year-old white girl, was snubbed by not receiving an Oscar nomination for his performance. They also felt that Michael B Jordan, who plays Bryan Stevenson, the attorney who worked to successfully reverse his wrongful conviction, should have also received an Oscar-nom. 

The performances of Foxx and Jordan pull at your heartstrings while you watch a flawed judicial system and a series of racist acts against an innocent man take away his freedom and land him on death row. That same flawed judicial system and same racism also stops the by-the-book efforts of Stevenson who uncovers that testimonies to protect the accused were not brought into the trial, bribes and lying prevented him from getting a fair trial, and McMillian was also given the death sentence before he even had a trial — This left me shaking my head and uttering more ‘ohmigods’ than I can count. 

While Jordan and Foxx were great, you can’t ignore the other performances that Just Mercy brings to the screen. There’s Rob Morgan as fellow death row inmate, Herbert Richardson, who suffers from PTSD. While he admitted guilt to his crime, he hoped to have someone overturn his death row sentence for, perhaps, a more suitable sentence, which would be in a mental hospital. Unfortunately, he ends up being put to death and his performance as he learns his fate and as he walks to the chair left me crying. 

Darrell Britt-Gibson’s short scenes as Darnell Houston, a key witness for McMillian who recoils when he gets arrested for (what is fabricated) perjury, is also worth a mention. And Tim Blake Nelson’s performance as Ralph Henry was fantastic. 

The movie is not only emotional, but it’s incredibly eye-opening. The person I watched the movie with called it slow, but I disagreed. Every time I felt like I could call it slow, it uncovered another piece of important information to the case or pulled you into the real-life emotions of the prisoners or the family who wait behind. 

While I think that Just Mercy is one of those movies that need to be watched with performances that need to be applauded, I didn’t find it Oscar-worthy. Foxx has had stronger performance in other movie and while Jordan played Stevenson well, I felt that we didn’t get a deeper feeling of how this affected him — he lacked a sense of anger and while we see him cry at Richardson’s electrocution — that’s the closest we get to him. I felt the entire movie was incredibly well-done and, as I said, deserves to be watched.  

Rating: 8/10

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