just mercy

Despite having the cozy flatness of a mid-1990s film adaptation of John Grisham, Destin Daniel Cretton's Just Mercy ultimately emerges as a powerful polemic on racial injustice, incarceration, the flawed legal system, and the death penalty. Based upon Bryan Stevenson's acclaimed bestseller, Just Mercy hones in upon the story of Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx) a tree removal business owner who is on death row for the murder of a young woman in Alabama. After graduating from Harvard, Stevenson (played with understated, sturdy conviction by Michael B. Jordan) travels to Montgomery to help defend men like McMillian, who had been wrongly imprisoned. Unlike past defense lawyers, Stevenson cares to and is able to instantly bond with McMillian's family. Its this bond that helps sustain Stevenson through the rough patches that thwart his causes and the fits and starts of pursuing McMillian's exoneration. It becomes apparent from the opening that the case against Walter is extremely flimsy, rooted in racial bias and coercion. This is a town that flaunts its surface-level historical pride of "non-threatening" strides in civil rights--like being the birthplace of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird--in order to mask its ongoing inequity.

As he did in his piercing breakthrough Short Term 12, Cretton is able to bring out a wide array of strong performances from an eclectic cast. Many of the players from Short Term 12 were barely known at the time, and are now strong presences in the industry: Brie Larson, who also figures well in Mercy as Bryan's co-hort Eva Ansley in organizing the Equal Justice League, LaKeith Stanfield, Rami Malek and Kaitlyn Dever. I like the way Cretton's casts are unusual, as if you wouldn't normally fit them together in a film, and yet they work so symbiotically. In Just Mercy, the casting by Carmen Cuba and Cretton's direction of the actors, help emphasize the social impact of the picture. Tim Blake Nelson, Rafe Spall, Darrell Britt-Gibson, O'Shea Jackson Jr., and Rob Morgan are among the excellent supporting players.

Because they are so familiar and sometimes limited in what they can do, courtroom drama movies can be inert and underwhelming. Despite its engaging  cast, Just Mercy is very plainly told, with a grainy filmic quality, and the turns it takes are never too surprising. However, it probably helps that Stevenson's real experiences and his on-going work with the Equal Justice Initiative--seen here in the movie in its first stages of being established with underdog grit (just finding an office to set-up in was a barrier; soon after the events of this story), shapes its urgency and impact. ***


-Jeffery Berg

short term 12

Hawaiian-bred Writer / Director Destin Cretton based his moving and striking new film Short Term 12 on experiences working at a facility for troubled, at-risk youth.  Originally he made a short with a male as the story's lead supervisor but while working on the feature, he changed it to center upon a female named Grace.  Portrayed by Brie Larson (Rampart, "United States of Tara," The Spectacular Now), in an aching, warm and believable performance, Grace and her boyfriend Mason (an excellent John Gallagher Jr.) are counselors for foster kids in a sunlit, one-story cinder block building. Nate (a funny Rami Malek) is a nervous fish-out-of-water, new addition to the staff. The kids include bottled-up Marcus (Keith Stanfield) struggling with past abuse and dour, insecure young Jayden (Kaitlyn Dever) who ends up rattling the usually resilient, thick-skinned Grace.

Shot on RED Epic by cinematographer Brett Pawlak, the somewhat unsteady camera often follows Grace dauntlessly moving room to room (closed doors and sharp objects aren't allowed); therein, for her and the audience, lies the fear that one of the kids, many who are impulsive, may harm one another or themselves. It's lit with a honeyed, yellowish glow that adheres to the contradictory aspects of the storyline and of its complex characters; it's a look that manages to be dingy and raw but also warm and hopeful. The quiet, unobtrusive score by Joel P. West is an opus of strummed guitars, strings holding out lengthy notes and subdued piano chords.  Cretton's script feels natural, dotted with quickly-paced disarming little moments, but also focused and well-structured.

I quickly realized the subtlety and strengths of Short Term 12 when Grace and Mason are first seen together at home after a day of work.  They acted so differently in these different environments; at first I thought Grace's boyfriend was someone who looked just like Mason but Larson and Gallagher are so harmonious and natural and the direction is completely unadorned.  To prepare for the role of Grace, Larson researched material on the film's subject matter but also delved into her character: "I'd go into a corner and drink a lot of black coffee and get myself feeling really ill and say, 'I'm going into the pit.'" Gallagher's Mason adds balance and shades of humor--you can see why the two are in a relationship and sometimes, why they would be drawn to their occupation.  The sufferings of the characters are sometimes brought out metaphorically and with resonance by the cast: Dever's harrowing Octopus story monologue and Stanfield's rap solo. Deft, unsentimental and evocative throughout, the film refreshingly doesn't harbor upon obvious tropes and never vocalizes easy conclusions: it's often a film about what's unspeakable.  Yet underneath, there are many traumas, including Grace's past abuse, and the sometimes sad predicaments of the kids.  The story almost veers into melodrama in the latter half when the tragedies are tripled, but Larson and the restraint of Cretton's direction steer the ship steady.  ***1/2

-Jeffery Berg