Bob Marley: One Love

Reinaldo Marcus Green’s Bob Marley: One Love features Kingsley Ben-Adir as the legendary Jamaican reggae musician and songwriter Bob Marley. From head to toe, this film is a biopic that focuses on Marley’s life story, depicting his early years, professional career, family life and death in 1981. Lashana Lynch and James Norton also perform in important secondary roles.

It is reasonable to assume that I am not particularly knowledgeable about Bob Marley: One Love. Well, I like listening to his music, but I’m not one of those loyal fans who learn about an artist’s work by heart. For me, it’s simply that from time to time I get to hear some of his songs due to their popularity and I enjoy them on the rare occasions that I do hear them. Saying that, I went into this film wanting to learn more about the man regardless.

I was interested in the person himself and the way he has affected not only the world of music but the world in general given his perhaps rising career was politically tumultuous in Jamaica at the time. If there is any such place that everybody seems to not want to help you become a movie biopic about the person we are just gonna find out about this film. And now we see whether this movie can break the stereotypical mode for a movie about the history of music which in our time is hard to make without being banal.

To begin with, I would like to state that Adir and Lynch are the greatest of them all when it comes to acting. Once again, I am on thin ice with Marley and marching as an icon of musical genre Adir, I cannot say that any conclusions from such a performance are enough and all I can say is it’s a nice performance from a performance perspective.

Knee deep in the clear water or in the mud or clay, Adir loves his character and there is no question about it, though there won’t be any god like moment for him a year from now, there are parts where he seems to imitate Marley’s ideals of love and transformation advocates. So does Lashana Lynch and she also scores few emotional gut punching moments that one cannot escape and sunddenly I understand that she can compete with Kinglsey Ben-Adir who in my opinion is a star on the rose.

It is in the musical scenes that this biopic works its most effectively, and you see Marley performing the best to the extent of being a skilled singer. I do have to clarify and say that the amount of musical scenes present was on the lower side than what I was expecting and I can say that I was a little disappointed by the fact that the movie did not have a concert scene of the proportions that 2018s Bohemian Rhapsody had with the live aid concert scene.

With that said, however, these musical scenes in this film are quite fun. The songs themselves are good and if I may add, there was a nice variety in the use of old clips of Marley and Adir singing and in Adiras performance as well. I cannot say that the foot tapping did not happen because it did and it was interesting to catch a glimpse of what was behind some of these songs.

However, continuing with the negative aspects, I regretfully admit that he film has its share of biopic clichés, which is a major letdown. First what they do is setup the rise, glory, fall and some redemption of the central character and dont do much to go off the cocked gun. But for this movie specifically, the issue is with the pacing and orders of cut that is what seems to be the practice in this cut.

For instance, there is a non-linear story with eloping and inducing past and present through different scenes. One adulthood depiction of Marley is often ceased with visuals from his childhood, in a matter of speaking, throughout the picture. The story simply goes on from one event to another within Marley’s lifetime and it just all seems disorganized. I could see the vision the film tried to attain in piecing history and goal in a few events from Marley’s past and bringing, but it was so messy.

In my opinion, I thought that his childhood scenes weren’t as captivating as watching him as an adult trying to build his career around the political turmoil in his country and the childhood scenes seemed to overshadow the real essence of the story.

Another big issue that comes out clearly from the movie is how it seems to be lacking in a proper curtain down. This was particularly prominent in the scenes that featured the character of Marley and his wife Rita. At one point they start into this massive fight almost out of nothing and I was even wondering what the fighting was all about.

There wasn’t much earlier on to too strongly present that this argument was just around the corner and that it was well paced from simmering tensions within their marriage. It honestly feels like it simply takes place simply for the purpose of a large fighting sequence and I was equally confound as to how it had become a problem.

The feeling that the film gives its viewers as a collective is this one and one can tell that it Hillary is starting becoming famous and growing up is not a gradual process. As is the case with a lot of scenes in this movie, its just like that they just seem to happen and the movie is in a way uninterested in pursuing it deeper.

The Bob Marley: One Love, as I have mentioned briefly III, is a bit unfocused. Certainly, I did pick up some new information regarding Marley’s life. However after checking out the movie, I somehow searched for it online and it was pathetic because the movie does not even begin to touch some of the issues.

I mean mainly the political context which surrounded Marley and surely poured a lot of interesting work on screen which I would have liked to have seen. But then the movie seems to have troubles engaging completely with that notion and I’m afraid that all the satisfaction we derive from that dimension of the movie isn’t from the movie itself but all these archival footages which seem to interrupt the storyline as if some burden and they didn’t seem to give much to them.

And dreadlock travels llama searching for someone like Marley through his traces embodied in this film is not one of those which will make the viewer persist in spite of other pressing issues then the image of Marley.

All in all, Bob Marley: One Love has few strong restorted performances from the two main performers, and some amusing musical scenes, however those do not lessen the impact of the film which appears to be yet another in a long line of musical biographies that provides no rational value.

I simply settled in my seat and figured if I had just read a Wikipedia article about Bob Marley’s life and kept his music playing in the background in my apartment, I would have been better off at that. To say it is a terrible movie is wrong but it is yet another cookie cutter biopic that adds absolutely no value beyond this superficial, basic type of approach on the subject in hand.

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