On the brink of civil war, Jamaica looked to a music icon, Bob Marley (Kingsley Ben-Adir), to spread peace and bring the country together. After an attempt on his life, Marley navigates his greatest journey: creating a groundbreaking album that will change the world. Bob Marley: One Love is the story of Marley and his family as they attempt to make change.
Bob Marley’s intention was to unite the world, to bring everyone together and allow them to see the good in everyone else. Bob Marley: One Love, regardless of its intention, isn’t quite as capable of uniting all moviegoers.
The reality is that foreign languages and accents can be difficult for people to understand, and with the majority of the dialogue being in Jamaican Patois (with no subtitles), much of the film was challenging to understand. Bob Marley: One Love challenges its viewers to read between the lines and attempt to understand exactly what is transpiring throughout. As challenging as it was to understand a lot of the dialogue, it’s really a testament to what Ben-Adir and Lashana Lynch (Rita Marley) were able to do as actors. Throughout the course of the film, not a single word uttered from either actor (or most of the others for that matter) exposes their accents–and their perfect acting helps to envelop viewers in this story.
It’s often hard to say that anything is perfect, that any aspect of a film is truly flawless–but it’s fair to say that both Lynch and Ben-Adir are flawless in their performances. They are the highlight of Bob Marley: One Love, and even at its lowest moments, they carry the film to success.
Bob Marley is credited with being active in the music business for nearly two decades before his untimely death in 1981, and yet, there feels like there isn’t much substance to Bob Marley: One Love. Again, with nearly two decades worth of content to focus on, the handful of writers and Director Reinaldo Marcus Green chose to focus primarily on his Smile Jamaica concert and the development of the “Exodus” album. While these parts of Marley’s life are integral to his legacy, there’s so much more than could have and should have been covered. Bob Marley: One Love isn’t too long of a film, and yet, it felt that there wasn’t enough content to fill it in its entirety.
The majority of Bob Marley: One Love is superbly edited, brilliantly matching the impeccable vocals of the real Marley with the movement of Ben-Adir, but toward the conclusion of the film, in the closing moments as Ben-Adir performs “Redemption Song,” the editing team slips up. This was, up until the final moments, another aspect of the film that was flawless, that worked to pull us further into the narrative–but as it falters, much of what came before is tarnished ever so slightly.
What Bob Marley: One Love is really meant to be is a universal feel-good story–one that has the potential to reinstill some often forgotten hope in mankind. The reality is, however, that as a result of the language barrier, there is a strong chance that some of the message is lost along the way. Bob Marley: One Love, at its core, is what it set out to be, and while there are some hiccups throughout, I think Green and his team do a decent job of bringing parts of Marley’s life to the big screen.
Directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green.
Written by Terence Winter, Frank E. Flowers, Zach Baylin, & Reinaldo Marcus Green.
Starring Kingsley Ben-Adir, Lashana Lynch, James Norton, Tosin Cole, Umi Myers, etc.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐½/10 = WATCH IT FOR FREE
