Just Mercy is a thoughtful meditation on the
nature of compassion and cruelty.
It’s a startling reminder that human beings
are capable of both extremes.
The film has been adapted
from the memoir of Bryan Stevenson,
a Harvard-trained lawyer, who moved to a
 small town in Alabama in 1989
to review charges against death row inmates.
Bryan is black like most of the men he defends.
But the system – police, prosecution, 
judiciary– is white.
Which means there is little hope of
 justice or mercy.
As one of the prisoners Walter McMillian puts
it – you’re guilty from the moment you are born.
Director and co-writer Destin Daniel Cretton
tells the story with a somber stillness.
There is an overarching compassion but also
a measured pace.
It took me a good 15 to 20 minutes to sink
into the film.
Just Mercy accrues its power slowly.
Cretton builds layer upon layer until suddenly,
surprisingly, you find yourself getting teary.
It’s devastating to witness the
 blatant racism.
The upholders of the law aren’t even trying
to pretend that the system is fair.
Black men are denied justice at every step.
The film benefits vastly from strong performances
by Michael B. Jordan who plays Bryan Stevenson
and Jamie Foxx, who plays McMillian, a logger
who has been framed for the murder of a white woman.
Jordan plays down his natural charisma and
renders skillfully Bryan’s frustration and resilience.
Early in the film, when Stevenson enters the
correctional facility, he is strip searched.
His eyes seem haunted by the humiliation of
it – there is no reason for him to be subjected
to this except to satisfy a 
white cop’s whim.
Meanwhile Foxx stays stoic in the face of
discrimination and death.
His suffering gives him a nobility.
He keeps his dignity intact, which makes the
situation even more heart-breaking.
When McMillian finally crumbles, you weep
with him.
Oscar-winner Brie Larson also appears as a
local advocate who works alongside Stevenson
but there isn’t enough in her character
to justify the casting.
The centerpiece of Just Mercy is the execution
of a mentally ill prisoner named Herb.
Cretton doesn’t allow us to look away from
what it’s like to take a life.
Herb’s request for a certain song, his fear
and eventual acceptance of his fate and the
sound made when 
electric shocks kill him is just horrific.
The sequence eloquently slams the legal system.
Just before he is arrested, McMillian, who
is cutting trees, looks up and contemplates the sky.
That patch of blue becomes his solace as
 he waits to be hanged for a crime he did not commit.
Cretton returns to it again through the film,
making it a poignant reminder
of how much most of us take for granted.
Just Mercy isn’t stylistically dazzling.
The chronicle of racism is also familiar.
But Cretton and his leads give the 
narrative an urgency and timeliness.
After all, injustice fueled by bigotry and
bias, is a story currently playing out in
every corner of the world, including ours.
