Civil fights
Broad but effective legal drama proves a solid platform for Michael B. Jordan
“Just Mercy” is set in the Alabama of the1980s, yet it speaks to everywhere today about the endemic evil of wrongful convictions.
Fuelled by righteous anger about injustice in an America where racism and expediency trump civil rights and humanity, Destin Daniel Cretton’s fact-based story is long on drama and short on subtlety.
The passion of the argument comes through regardless. Its bluntness may be necessary to hammer the message home.
Michael B. Jordan is Bryan Stevenson, a young Harvardschooled lawyer from the liberal north who opts to ply his trade in racially fraught Alabama because that’s where he’s needed the most.
When his worried parents see him off, their expressions of
concern are more deeply felt than the usually parental sendoff.
Bryan is a Black man heading to a state where arrests and convictions are often based on colour: Black and poor means guilty; white and affluent means not.
“What you’re doing is going to make a lot of people upset,” his mother warns.
The truth of this soon becomes evident when Bryan arrives in Monroeville — where Harper Lee situated Atticus Finch, her attorney of integrity in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” another tale of a Black man denied justice.
Bryan teams with local justice advocate Eva (Brie Larson) and picks up the seemingly hopeless case of Walter (“Johnny D.”) McMillian (Jamie Foxx), currently languishing on death row. Walter was arrested, convicted by a jury and jailed for the 1987 murder of an 18-yearold white woman who had been working in a dry cleaner.
It’s clear to anyone taking even a cursory look at the case that there’s no way Walter could have committed the murder, or any other crime. He was at a church fish fry that day, among other things, and there are credible witnesses who can attest to that.
Walter’s conviction was due to the sworn testimony of another inmate, Ralph Myers, played with impressive shiftiness by
Tim Blake Nelson. He claimed he saw Walter with the body, but he has a history of deceit.
There was no reason for anybody to believe Myers. But the cops and district attorney needed a scapegoat to solve a horrific crime, and Walter was the most convenient patsy, as any Black southerner can attest.
“You’re guilty from the moment you’re born,” Walter tells Bryan about a Black man’s lot in
Alabama, as he initially refuses legal aid that he thinks will just be wasting time. (A repeat match cut where Walter’s and Bryan’s faces are framed by iron bars drives the point home.)
Bryan persists in his investigation, as “Just Mercy” becomes a sturdy, expansive procedural.
Strong performances, including a career-peak one from Jordan, help turn the message into a satisfying movie.