Veteran comedy director
Reginald Hudlin of House Party, Boomerang and The Ladies Man hit a road block with his 2002 critical and
commercial dud Serving Sara before
diving into television work for the past fifteen years. With the 1940s courtroom drama Marshall concerning an early case in the
life of attorney Thurgood Marshall, Hudlin returns to the director’s chair with
arguably his first serious minded picture.
Starring Chadwick Boseman as the historic first African-American Supreme
Court Justice, the biographical legal drama concerns an attorney set to defend
a black man named Joseph Spell (Sterling K. Brown) accused of rape and
attempted murder of a wealthy white woman, Eleanor Strubing (Kate Hudson). When the Judge (James Cromwell) blocks
Marshall from defending his client, he enlists the help of Sam Friedman (Josh Gad),
a Jewish insurance attorney tasked with trying his first criminal case.
This will be the fourth
figure of historical significance Boseman has played and given his stride it is
unlikely he’ll stop anytime soon. Much
like Denzel Washington, the man exudes class, confidence and razor-sharp wit
who takes his profession very seriously while also giving off the subtle whiff
of an impish prankster. Josh Gad as the
inexperienced Friedman who finds himself embroiled in more than he bargained
for mostly fares well though I couldn’t help but confuse him with Jonah Hill a
few times while watching. Providing a
solid adversary is the prosecuting attorney Lorin Willis (Dan Stevens), whose
threatening gaze can’t help but recall his psychopath in Adam Wingard’s The Guest. As a first drama for director Hudlin, it’s a
solid change of pace though occasional some of his trademark humor bleeds
through.
Initially this looked from
the outset like a made-for-television drama bumped up to theaters ala Trumbo but upon watching it proved to be
highly cinematic. Shot by Drive cinematographer Newton Thomas
Sigel and scored by veteran Jazz musician Marcus Miller, the film possesses a
moody cool and technical prowess far ahead of the recent string of civil rights
and justice dramas. Mostly though this
is Boseman and Gad’s show as the unlikely dynamic duo fire back at one another
with relish when they aren’t working feverishly to the brink of their mutual
professions. It's also been a while since we last saw Kate Hudson at the forefront again and she's given a lot of heavy lifting to do as the accuser who may or may not be telling the whole story.
Much like Young Mr. Lincoln, the film is less
concerned with who it’s subject would become than examining one of the many
chapters in his life that led him to his position. Some of the tropes of this kind of drama set
in this period can be spotted a mile away but when Marshall is ensconced in legalese while exacerbating the uphill
battle faced by it’s future Supreme Court Justice, it often is a compelling
courtroom exercise. While I'm not going to call it a great movie, there's a captivating drama here that will for most viewers keen on the historical legal drama be time well spent.
Score:
- Andrew Kotwicki