Biopics are hard to get right. No matter how faithful they claim to be to the source material, as an audience member you must assume that portions of it have been dramatized and changed to tell a compelling story. I go into these films expected to get at least the spirit of what its subject matter was known for, and if I’m not familiar with it, I expect to come out of it at least understanding the gist of it.
Reinaldo Marcus Green’s “Bob Marley: One Love” accomplishes this albeit from a very limited scope. Do not come into this film expecting the same treatment as films like “The Theory of Everything” or “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which delve into their subject matter’s respective fields and what they brought to it. “One Love” tells a narrow tale of Marley’s (Kingsley Ben-Adir) place in the fraught political landscape of Jamaica in the late 1970s, in which the nation was on the brink of civil war with extremely violent clashes between the nation’s two leading political parties.
In this backdrop, Marley is preaching peace and love through his music and tries to remain apolitical, even when lackeys from one side sends would-be assassins to his house to shoot him and his wife, Rita Marley (Lashana Lynch). Ben-Adir and Green quite successfully bring to life this thesis that Marley lived by about rejecting “vengeance” and accepting love, highlighted perhaps best when one of those almost killers returns to Marley’s house later in the film asking forgiveness, which he grants.
However, the film sprints through Marley’s meteoric rise to fame, lifting himself from poverty and what he brought to Reggae and what that genre is all about. It sufficiently leaves those unfamiliar with his music — or those with only surface level knowledge — in the dust. I have similar criticisms for Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro,” which seems like it was a film made exclusively for people who already know everything there is to know about Leonard Bernstein’s music and who just want a personal account of who he was as a man. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it instantly confines these films into niches, which seems more appropriate for a film that’s on Netflix like “Maestro” than a wide release theatrical film like “One Love.”
But assuming you’re a Bob Marley aficionado already deeply familiar with both his discography and genre, you’ll probably love this. And for those who aren’t, it still has powerful messages relevant to our current divisive political climate in America.
Ben-Adir and Lynch dominate this film and indeed, their performances and characters are perhaps the only ones worth writing about. The rest are fine and serviceable, but every other character is flat and are solely included to move particular plot points forward or serve as support for the Marleys — which is the literal job of most of the cast (most of the cast are employees at Marley’s record label or his entourage).
Bob Marley is portrayed as a calculating, complex man well aware of the political ramifications of his status as perhaps Jamaica’s best known star, who is not without fault. He has a tenuous relationship with his wife, Rita, marred by a large volume of infidelity. But the two share a love for each other that endures, even if Rita resents Bob for sacrificing her own career and stardom for his.
Their relationship is the most interesting thing about the film, outside of Bob’s determination to play in Jamaica after he had been shot. That’s the emotional climax of the film, one that ends with a message of peace and actual clips of the real-life Bob Marley joining the hands of two Jamaican political rivals.
Ben-Adir completely disappears in this role and makes it his own. That, and his chemistry with Lynch, make this film work.
With that being said, the film also leaves much to be desired. I wish more time was spent towards illustrating Bob’s rise to fame and explaining exactly what the politically-charged violence was all about. Its greatest fault is that it strips away necessary context likely to save time, which serves as a large barrier for general audiences to understand and get invested in this film. This also leaves Bob as a character woefully underdeveloped — when we meet him, he’s already famous and at the top of his game, and this film is more about how he used his influence than painting a complete picture of who he was as a man and how far he climbed to get to become a star.
This film is a mixed bag. It has some great moments and performances by namely Ben-Adir and Lynch, but it’s extremely limited by the scope of its script, which makes it feel incomplete.
“Bob Marley: One Love” gets a 7/10
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