'Marshall' Review: Boseman Displays A Powerful Performance In his 3rd Biopic In 5 Years!

📚 Marshall 📚 Review 📚 8.6/10 📚

This streamlined biopic deftly sidesteps most of the genre's cliches, offering a character who's both human and heroic. Director Reginald Hudlin (House Party, Boomerang) is hardly a master filmmaker, but (here's some trivia) he was part of an important movement of African-American filmmakers in the early 1990s, and he brings a crisp, bracing vigor to Marshall. It recalls some of Spike Lee's work on Malcolm X, but with less showiness.

Boseman stars in his third biopic in just five years, but his work here is more fascinatingly flawed than his performance in 42 and more emotionally gripping than in Get On Up. He delivers an expert performance, and the supporting cast steps up to match him. Gad was amazing in the role of Sam Friedman, a jewish lawyer who had never handled a criminal case up until he met Marshall. Kate Hudson was very deceiving as the "victim" Eleanor Strubling. Even Sterling K. Brown finds depth as the accused Joseph Spell, which is something that even a classic like To Kill a Mockingbird couldn't quite manage with character Boo Radley. Taken all together, Marshall manages to evoke a certain kind of impotent rage, blended with the intoxicating power of standing up against hate. It's an important film as well as an entertaining one.