The best bit about Bob’s biopic? His classic song
At the end of the packed media screening of Bob Marley: One Love, something unusual happened. Half the audience upped and left, as normal, but the other half remained, singing along – a few even danced – to the reggae classic that gives the film its subtitle and pulses out so movingly over the end credits.
Tellingly, however, that was probably the best moment of the 100-odd minutes that preceded it. Director Reinaldo Marcus Green, hitherto best known for the tennis biopic King Richard, uses them to tell the extraordinary but all-too-brief life story of the hugely influential Jamaican musician, who died of cancer in 1981. He was only 36.
To be fair, Green certainly provides a couple of hairs-on-the-back-ofyour-neck moments that rival it. First, when Bob and his backing band, The Wailers, having fled the violence of Jamaica’s near-civil war in the late 1970s for the relative sanctuary of London, are tentatively feeling their way through Exodus for the first time in the living room of their Chelsea digs.
The second comes in one of the film’s sporadic flashbacks, to the period when Marley was trying to break through on the Jamaican music scene. An audition is going nowhere, until his band abandon their American covers and launch into their own, Simmer Down. It’s glorious and, frankly, this could have done with more.
But this is a film that concentrates its efforts on the last five years of Marley’s life and ends up having covered that ground in a slightly sanitised, 12A way. It cries out for a stronger, more compelling route
through the same events. Kingsley Ben-Adir, all flailing dreadlocks and accent that’s just short of requiring subtitles, provides a charismatic presence but is halfa-head too tall and a touch too handsome to totally convince as the man himself. Bond star Lashana Lynch, however, is terrific as Marley’s formidable but much put-upon wife, Rita. You can’t say The Iron
Claw doesn’t set out its stall from the start. It begins in the wrestling ring, quickly shows us the painful head-hold that gives the film its title then rolls forward to the late 1970s, so that one of the main characters can explain ‘the family curse’. Those who know about American pro wrestling will probably get more from this dramatisation of the travails of the Von Erich family, who are with a metaphorical iron claw by its muscular patriarch, Fritz, played extremely well by Holt McCallany. But as the tragedies and toxic masculinity pile up, I found myself wondering how long Zac Efron had been preparing for his role – his body resembles that of a professional bodybuilder – and whether the four brothers’ haircuts could possibly have been that awful. Turning Red was
initially released on Disney+ two years ago but now the Pixar animation, which became famous for being one of the first children’s cartoons to mention periods, is getting a cinema release, and it’s well worth a look. The fact that 13-year-old Chinese-Canadian Mei Lee suddenly starts turning into a giant red panda at moments of high emotion turns out to have
‘It cries out for a stronger, more compelling route through his life’
little to do with menstruation (‘Did the red peony bloom?’ asks her concerned mother), but rather more to do with growing up and embracing your loud, messy inner beast. Good, if biologically slightly confusing.
Scooter gangs that roar around our city streets stealing mobile phones from pedestrians are one of the great banes of modern life. So it’s hard to sympathise with the five young protagonists at the heart of Gassed Up, who do exactly that.
But we get there eventually, thanks to a well-structured screenplay, some scary Albanian gangsters and good performances from a cast led by Stephen Odubola and Craige Middleburg. Best brush up on your street-talk first, though.