31 Movies of May, Day 17: Just Mercy

May 17th viewing: Just Mercy

Year of Release: 2019

Directed by: Destin Daniel Cretton

Written by: Destin Daniel Cretton & Andrew Lanham (based on the book by Bryan Stevenson)

Starring: Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Foxx, Brie Larson, Rob Morgan, Rafe Spall, Karan Kendrick, O’Shea Jackson Jr.

Accompanying Beverage of Choice: Session Sour Amarillo (American Wild Ale, 4,0% ABV), Penrose Brewing Company, Geneva, Illinois
(Support Independent Breweries - buy local when getting buzzed during quarantine)

Just Mercy was an Oscar season release last year that didn’t manage to get much awards traction, other than a single Screen Actors Guild nomination. The film is the story of Bryan Stevenson, a Harvard Law grad who moves to Alabama to defend death row inmates. Specifically, it focuses on his advocacy for Walter “Johnny B” McMillan, a Black man wrongfully convicted of murdering a white woman in 1988. On paper, it does feel like the kind of story that would try to be feel-good Oscar bait - it’s a biopic, it features triumph over adversity, it’s socially aware in a way that Oscar voters can feel good about themselves for liking it. But setting aside the Academy boxes it checks, Just Mercy stands on its own as simply a very well made movie. And a big reason for that is the incredible lineup of underappreciated actors the movie wields at its core.

Let’s start with Jamie Foxx as Johnny B, probably the most appreciated of the underappreciated, given that he actually has one of those famous golden statuettes on his mantle at home. But even though Foxx has an Oscar, he rarely seems to be talked about as one of our best working actors, and he absolutely is. Foxx is the guy who should have gotten the most praise out of Django Unchained, as his performance is a master class in subtlety surrounded by much bigger performances absorbing all of the attention. I say this as someone who really likes the film’s actual award-winning performance from Christoph Waltz, who often improperly gets accused of just replicating his Inglourious Basterds performance (those characters have similar energies, yes, but the calibrations Waltz makes to go from sociopathy to genuine goodheartedness are key and well done).

It is kind of amazing in this film how well Foxx is able to alter his face to show how his character’s life of persecution weighs on him. During a key hearing at the end of the second half, where Johnny B gets his first real sign of hope, Foxx brightens up to make himself look 20 years younger than he looked one scene before. After the motion is denied, Foxx suddenly looks 20 years older again as he is brusquely forced back into his cell. And the ribbon wrapping the performance is Foxx’s natural gift for playing characters that are incredibly crafty but somehow undermined by either self-sabotage (Baby Driver, Dreamgirls) or external societal expectations (Collateral, Ray). In Just Mercy, it’s a little bit of both.

Michael B. Jordan, on the other hand, has legions of diehard fans, but no Oscar. It certainly helps his cause that he is incredibly handsome, but Jordan might be better at showing depth through charm than anybody in the game right now. He knows he has a million dollar smile, but he also knows the exact time when it is most effective to deploy it. And in the first scene he has as Bryan, when he is just a law student meeting a death row inmate he can’t help, Jordan does a terrific job of showing how green his character is while also demonstrating the dawning realization that this kind of work is what he was meant to do. You can tell the key moment when the light first flickers on: It’s when Jordan flashes that smile while shooting the shit about choir practice.

You get a similar energy from O’Shea Jackson, Jr., who has a small role as the resident of Johnny B’s neighboring cell on Alabama death row. Jackson had a rather unique entry into the film world, as he owes the beginning of his career to being Ice Cube’s son - and I don’t even mean that in a necessarily negative nepotistic way, given that they were making a biopic of NWA and needed somebody who looked like a young Ice Cube to play a young Ice Cube. Turns out, Ice Cube’s son did a pretty good job at the role he got for being Ice Cube’s son. And even more surprising, he turned out to be pretty good at acting in general! He’s the best thing about the dark social media satire Ingrid Goes West, playing a kind of dork-loser character far removed from a seminal 90’s hip-hop artist, and he has a knack for bringing a little weirdness to other roles, as well. Here, he gets a great little moment telling a fantasy story about tea with the Queen, bringing a nice amount of off-key levity to a dark setting.

The most underappreciated of them all, however, is Rob Morgan. Morgan’s biggest career exposure has been through one-dimensional recurring bit parts on TV shows like Daredevil and Stranger Things, and most of his work there is comic relief. But when given the chance, he has a remarkable ability to wring pathos out of downtrodden characters through varying ways. In Mudbound, he plays a stoic patriarch of a southern WWII-era Black family, but he’s able to convey so much depth through his stone face. The film is bookended by a scene where Morgan is asked to help bury a vile racist who crippled his son, and by the time you return to Morgan’s face at the end you realize that the whole story of the film is written in the restrained, exasperated contempt of his expression. In Just Mercy, Morgan plays a more emotive character less capable of holding it in, but he’s still able to wield that demeanor effectively to maximize the tragedy as he takes his final walk down death row, saying one final goodbye to the men he has considered friends over his many years of confinement.

Jordan, who also serves as a producer on the film, has said that this was the first film he ever worked on with an inclusion rider requiring a set amount of the roles to be filled by underrepresented communities. I imagine the rider didn’t apply to the people in front of the camera so much as the crew and staff behind it. But that spirit does come through in the cast as well, as it’s rare you get to see these many talented Black actors filling a screen together in a movie that isn’t directly targeted at a Black audience. It certainly did wonders here. It would be nice to see it do wonders more often - ideally in settings other than a prison.