JUST MERCY
(12A)
★★★★★
BASED on lawyer Bryan Stevenson’s memoir Just Mercy: A Story Of Justice And Redemption, writer-director Destin Daniel Cretton’s courtroom drama adds a thick layer of Hollywood sheen to the true story of an Alabama pulpwood worker, who attempted to overturn his murder conviction from death row.
On November 1, 1986, the town of Monroeville, where Harper Lee wrote To Kill A Mockingbird, recoils from news of a violent crime in the beating heart of the community.
Eighteenyear-old part-time clerk Ronda Morrison has been strangled and shot dead at Jackson Cleaners.
A trial lasting a day and a half finds local man Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx), known as Johnny D, guilty of the heinous act.
The conviction hinges on eyewitness evidence from Ralph Myers (Tim Blake Nelson).
Sheriff Tate (Michael Harding) publicly professes Walter’s guilt and a judge overrules the jury’s recommendation of life behind bars to hand down a death sentence.
Two years later, idealistic lawyer Bryan Stevenson (Michael B Jordan) takes up Walter’s case and braces for a hostile reception.
“What you’re doing is gonna make a lot of people upset,” warns his mother. “You better be careful.”
Bryan co-founds the Equal Justice Initiative with southern firebrand Eva Ansley (Brie Larson) and visits Holman Correctional Facility, where Walter is awaiting execution.
The lawyer attempts to buoy his client’s spirits but Walter is aware of the slim chances of success against District Attorney Tommy Chapman (Rafe Spall).
“You know how many people been freed from Alabama death row?” Walter sternly asks Bryan. “None... You ain’t gonna be the one to change that.”
Just Mercy is a showcase for Jordan and Foxx, who forge a compelling and moving screen partnership that energises the bloated running time.
The emotional beats of Cretton’s script are predictable but there is undeniable satisfaction when they land, accompanied by heavenly harmonies from a gospel choir on the soundtrack.
POWER taints and corrupts in Bombshell, director Jay Roach’s provocative drama inspired by the real-life sexual harassment scandal which engulfed Fox News and precipitated the downfall of its chief executive Roger Ailes.
Screenwriter Charles Randolph, who shared the Oscar with Adam McKay for the whip-smart script to The Big Short, employs similar stylistic devices – characters breaking the fourth wall, pithy voice overs – to ricochet between the viewpoints of three women (two real, one fictional) with the urgency of a breaking news story.
It’s incendiary entertainment punctuated by a few knockout scenes including a sickening audition in Ailes’ office, which involves one naive employee tearfully hitching up her skirt to show her legs until her underwear is exposed because the CEO claims that TV news is “a visual medium”.
Prosthetics and make-up facilitate Charlize Theron’s startling transformation into Megyn Kelly, the fiercely outspoken commentator and anchor, who suffered venomous abuse after she berated Donald Trump for his treatment of women during the 2016 Republican debate.
Nicole Kidman and Margot Robbie add fire to the film’s gym-toned belly, the latter fully deserving her Oscar nomination with a powerhouse performance that tears the heart out of our chests.
In 2016, Gretchen Carlson (Kidman), co-anchor of the morning news show Fox And Friends, meets with lawyers after she endures sexism in the workplace and is demoted to a graveyard slot in the station schedule. She prepares to file a harassment suit against chief executive Roger Ailes (John Lithgow) and is confident other women in the company will support her version of events.
Instead, female co-workers wear Team Roger T-shirts and issue public statements of support for him.
“I jumped off a cliff. I thought one of them would stand with me,” laments Gretchen to her legal team.
One of Fox News’s most prominent ★★★★★
ADAPTED from the bestselling novel by Donna Tart, this lavish drama sees 13-year-old Theodore Decker (Oakes Fegley) visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York with his mother, when a bomb goes off. She is killed, but the boy survives. In the aftermath, Theo accepts a ring from a fatally injured old man (Robert Joy), who instructs the lad to take a painting called The Goldfinch, and Theo exits with the canvas. In the absence of his father, Theo seeks shelter with a classmate, whose mother (Nicole Kidman) grows fond of the lad. Theo (now played by Ansel Elgort) blossoms and he conceals the priceless painting in a storage unit while working in an antiques shop.
■ Download/stream and on DVD from January 20.