Bob Marley, One Love: The Off-Balance Review.
This middling biopic doesn't do its complicated lead justice.
The blueprint was there.
But Bob Marley: One Love, the biopic of the legendary singer-songwriter which released late last month, is, unfortunately, far too committed to playing it safe.
Rather than working to present a fuller portrait of Marley, known complexities and all, it instead is content to simply run through a series of predictable storytelling beats - never getting too close to what could be a far more interesting movie.
After a series of brief title cards to set the stage, we immediately jump into our main plot crux: it is 1976 and Jamaica is in crisis, beset with violence and political turmoil.
Looking to promote peace, Bob Marley (Kingsley Ben-Adir), is preparing to play the Smile Jamaica concert in Kingston - just as armed gunmen storm his home, in an attempted assassination attempt: non-fatally shooting Marley, his wife Rita (Lashana Lynch) and two other members of their band (The Wailers).
Heavily shaken by the experience, Marley plays the concert before travelling to London where he works to confront his faith, his message and his music - in time developing what will become his ninth album, 1977’s Exodus.
This period, during Marley’s self-imposed exile in England, is where we spend virtually all of One Love’s running time.
It should work, on paper.
Choosing not to go down the “traditional” biography route and instead focusing on Marley at his relative peak - not long before his early death from cancer, when he was one of the world’s biggest stars, is an interesting idea. But the movie, directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green and written by committee (alongside Green, Terence Winter, Frank E. Flowers and Zach Baylin are all credited) doesn’t attempt anything all that engaging.
Creatively safe, it keeps Marley at something of a distance, seemingly afraid that any sort of criticism or at the very least, deeper examination of the man will topple a delicate house of cards.
And sure, One Love being overseen by many of Marley’s surviving family (Rita, son Ziggy and daughter Cedella are all credited as producers), invites some obvious “well, yeah” reactions - of course the movie bringing his life to the screen will be somewhat “buttoned-up”… expect 2012’s documentary Marley, which had direct involvement from many of those same family members, didn’t hesitate to tackle Marley with a more head-on approach: from his relationship to Rastafarianism or his complicated fatherhood, which is only given the briefest of passing mentions in One Love (Marley, on record, had eleven children with various women, two of which were Rita’s children he adopted).
It leaves One Love lacking a certain energy and honesty, even if its two leads try their hardest to prove otherwise.
They share, strangely, only a handful of complete scenes together but when given the opportunity, Ben-Adir and Lynch do much to bring the often-complicated dynamic between Marley and Rita to life. It is, in the end, the only relationship in the movie given any sort of narrative weight, the various supporting characters, from the Wailers to Marley’s manager Chris Blackwell (James Norton), feeling more like boilerplate stand-ins than any sort of characters in their own right.
This extends too, to the movie’s bigger-picture structure, in which the main plot is often paused to devote time to various flashback sequences - from Marley’s childhood, the beginning of his relationship with Rita and music career or his early exploration (and later devotion) to Rastafarianism.
These segments are important in further fleshing Marley out (of course) but they arrive so bluntly, without any legitimate build-up, sense of pacing and most jarringly, are out of chronological order, almost thrown together in editing at the last second (of note too, is everything surrounding Marley’s cancer diagnosis and eventual death - resolved, given the movie’s timeframe, in post-credit text).
It all pales in comparison though, to what should be a highlight: the musical segments.
Even for the biopics of famous musicians and bands that buckled under their own weight/were too flippant with history (2018’s Bohemian Rhapsody) or, in some cases, disregarded the less-than stellar details entirely (2015’s Straight Outta Compton) there was still enjoyment to be found in their musical components which, despite other legitimate criticisms, worked hard to bring iconic tracks to the screen convincingly.
No, nothing is probably ever going to top Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon actually performing, in their entirety, the vocals and musical aspects both for Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash in Walk the Line (2005) but One Love can only bring the minimum amount of verisimilitude to the proceedings.
And credit to Ben-Adir where it is due - he puts in the work to capture Marley, both in famous stage presence and elsewhere, incredibly well. But for virtually all of his musical performances, it is clear that while he is simply lip-synching (which is fine!) the editing, cinematography and staging aren’t doing the required backing to still keep the viewer invested.
Yet on the rare occasion when he does actually sing on his own? You can’t help but come away impressed. So the creative decision to stray away from letting Ben-Adir actually, you know, act, is all the more perplexing - yeah, he was never going to sound exactly like Marley but to not trust the audience to accept that? It is particularly strange.
All-in-all, it incapsulates much of what simply doesn’t work with One Love. It wants to showcase a celebrated musician and a life cut short - on some levels, bolstered mainly by its performances, it is successful. But not enough to be asking for an encore.
Especially when a much stronger film, the 2012 documentary, could be watched instead.