‘Marshall’ a slim case for judicial heavyweight
An entertaining biographical film, “Marshall” depicts a small piece of the life of civil rights giant Thurgood Marshall (Chadwick Boseman), the first AfricanAmerican Supreme Court Justice of the United States.
The film limits its action to a rape case requiring Marshall and a reluctant and unwanted local Jewish insurance lawyer to defend a male African-American servant from a charge made by the wife of a powerful member of the upper-class Bridgeport, Conn., community in 1941.
Marshall is a lawyer working for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the legendary NAACP. The organization’s mission is to defend anyone of color accused of a crime simply because of his or her race, and Marshall is sent from New York’s Times Square offices to Connecticut, a northern state not as enlightened as you might think about race and religion. In Bridgeport, Marshall stays with an African-American family and unhappily teams up with local attorney Sam Friedman (a very good Josh Gad) because Marshall is not a member of the Connecticut bar.
In court, they meet their opposition, the entitledfrom-life Yale-educated attorney and prosecutor Loren Willis (a viper-thin Dan Stevens, “Downton Abbey”). They also run up against angry and violent locals, who hate blacks as much as Jews, and a brick wall in the form of the judge (James Cromwell), a venerable-looking man who used to be the law partner of Willis’ father.
The judge tells the combative Marshall that while he may sit at the defense table in court he is not allowed to question witnesses or to speak out in court at all, the equivalent of gagging the “uppity” black man.
The accused in the case of rape and attempted murder is the uneducated and frightened Joseph Spell (recent Emmy Award-winner Sterling K. Brown of “This Is Us”). Spell faces life imprisonment. Because he has assured Marshall that he is innocent of the crime, Marshall agrees to defend him, even gagged, free of charge, which is the NAACP’s policy in such cases.
If the courtroom scenes in “Marshall” at times remind you of the classic 1962 film version of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” it’s because of the case and because Marshall’s tremendous authority and dignity recall the princely Atticus Finch of the great Gregory Peck at his unsullied best.
A sidebar about Thurgood and his wife, Buster (Keesha Sharp, TV’s “Lethal Weapon”), and their attempts to have a child really do not register as anything more than gratuitous drama. Courtroom scenes featuring the supposed victim Eleanor Strubing (Kate Hudson) threaten to descend into melodrama. Veteran Jeffrey DeMunn is fine as always as a doctor testifying about Mrs. Strubing’s injuries.
Boseman and Gad have a nice chemistry. But the screenplay by Jacob Koskoff (“Macbeth”) and Connecticut attorney Michael Koskoff is second rate, and the direction of TV veteran Reginald Hudlin is less than inspired.
A scene in New York City in which Marshall and Buster drink with poet Langston Hughes (Jussie Smollett) and author Zora Neale Hurston (Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas) is utterly immaterial. Surely the life of Justice Marshall has more significant stories, Brown v. Board of Education, for one, to tell than this.
(“Marshall” contains mature content, racist epithets, sexually suggestive content and violence.)