A straightforward biopic that views one American's long career of fighting injustice through the lens of an early victory he won in Alabama, Destin Daniel Cretton'sstars Michael B. Jordan as Bryan Stevenson, founder of that state's Equal Justice Initiative. Having spent three decades overturning the convictions of the wrongly imprisoned and defending anyone on Death Row, Stevenson has been at the vanguard of a righteous fight.
Around the same period, Stevenson, a Harvard law student, is working as an intern in Georgia, where he shares a human moment with a death row inmate whose background is similar to his own. He finishes school and, over the protests of his fearful mother, moves south to defend death row inmates free of charge.
A local who has signed on as his paralegal, Eva Ansley , lets her boss move into and work out of her home, sharing work space with her son's toys. But as their work raises eyebrows in town, the situation becomes difficult: Older viewers will immediately know that when a phone rings at night, and a young boy says "it's for you, Mom," there's about to be a racist on the line issuing death threats.
The story is most involving at its margins: Walter's friendships with the men stuck in the cells next to his, for example; or scenes in which Stevenson tries to get the felon whose false testimony got McMillan convicted to admit that he lied. And in one or two harrowing moments, the film communicates the way Stevenson's up-close interaction with the institution of capital punishment informed his work.
*Shang-Chi
I cannot wait to see Just Mercy.
Fell asleep reading your review