First Hit: A compelling and moving story about overturning injustice.
This movie is based on the true-life story of Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan), who, after finishing law school at Harvard, moved to the deep south to help death-row prisoners in Alabama.
Although he was offered prestigious positions in other law firms, his mind was made up while during an internship, he interviewed death-row prisoners. He is deeply touched by these prisoner's stories and, after reviewing their files, learned that many of these men were unjustly accused and incarcerated.
Upon graduating from Harvard and passing the Alabama Bar, he moved to and opened a federally funded group to represent prisoners on death row. Arriving at their new offices, he is informed that he and his office manager Eva Ansley (Brie Larson), wouldn’t be able to rent the offices because of the type of work they were doing. Holing up in Eva and her husband’s home, they begin their quest to represent wrongfully convicted death-row inmates. The three touched upon in this film were different types of cases.
One of the stories is about Herbert Richardson (Rob Morgan), who was convicted of killing someone by a bomb he planted on the front porch of a house. Yes, he made the bomb, but what wasn’t taken into consideration was that Richardson had PTSD from his time in Vietnam and had struggled by being in and out of mental health facilities for over 30 years. His story is wonderfully mixed into the overall film by following his appeal process and subsequent death by electrocution. The latter is such a powerful scene, that it had our entire Saturday afternoon audience audibly crying.
The main story is about Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx), a man convicted of killing a young 18-year-old girl. The fact was that at the time of the victim’s death, he was surrounded by his entire family preparing food for a local fish fry. The testimony that got him incarcerated was given by Ralph Myers (Tim Blake Nelson), who was a convicted felon that made up the story to get off of death row. In other words, he made a deal to lie for the local police and DA so that he would have a more comfortable life in prison.
The storyline follows how Stevenson and Ansley, jump through enormous hoops put forth by the Alabama criminal justice system, to let the truth be known. The resistance was there in order to keep the criminal justice system from having to say it was criminally wrong and did not hand out justice to everyone equally under the law.
The film does a great job of mining the stories of the key players and how they ended up where they are. It also points out the discriminatory nature of many people and areas that still exist in the South.
This is a moving film, and I know that anyone seeing it will be impacted by the excellent acting and story behind the characters. The scene where Richarson is put to death is so powerfully well done even though you never see the actual execution. You’d be hard-pressed to not be affected by this scene.
Jordan was terrific as Stevenson. He plays this character with kindness and driven compassion which is outwardly kept under wraps. Larson is lovely as a mother and woman who is driven to do the right thing regardless of the impact on her family. Foxx was sublime. I loved the way he slowly let his guard down with Stevenson as time passed. It’s a powerful performance. Nelson, as Myers was terrific. His critical role in the story was only outshone by his ability to draw the audience into his persona and how he got to be the person he was. You cannot take your eyes off him when he’s on the screen. Morgan was phenomenal. I loved his character and maybe because I am also a Vietnam Veteran. I’ve met numerous street people who are vets that got lost along the way. His story touched me deeply. Destin Daniel Cretton and Andrew Lanham wrote an outstanding script and dug in where it needed to. Cretton got incredible performances from the entire cast and needs to be commended for bringing this subject to film.
Overall: A film worth seeing as the story it tells helps us learn who we are and what we need to change.