The story of how reggae icon Bob Marley overcame adversity and the journey behind his revolutionary music.
The “love” implied by this film’s title isn’t so much a reference to romantic love (although it is opening on Valentine’s Day) as to iconic musician Bob Marley’s love for his country, Jamaica. Marley was a man of music and deep abiding feelings for the poverty-washed island on the verge of civil war, thus making it an exceedingly dangerous place to live. However, he attempted to bring warring factors together through worldwide love for him and his music. At one point, he barely survived an assassination attempt on him and his band, The Wailing Wailers, a nod to the surname of one of the band’s founders.
Kingsley Ben-Adir is, unfortunately, miscast in the title role. He is too much of a handsome young English gentleman in type. However, he might have pulled the role off if it hadn’t been his misfortune to appear in a poorly made wig that looked too heavy and voluminous to portray Marley ideally.
On the other hand, Lashana Lynch was much more believable as Marley’s long-suffering wife, Rita. She was helped rather than hindered with costume, hair, and head covering choices. Costumes were, in fact, one of the “scores” the film makes in dressing the main characters, both male and female, in time and culture-appropriate clothing.
Bob Marley’s life story is interesting and often inspiring. His music is loved today by people born long after he died. His journey to fame and artistic recognition was difficult and often discouraging. This biopic of Marley and his music and rise to fame could have been worth all the work and wrangling of extras, not to mention outlay of cash, had the work of the editor and sound team not doomed it. It is VERY difficult to follow, and story threads are often introduced but never followed up on, or there is too much time between introduction and resolution. The audience has forgotten the thread when it comes up a second or third time.
The sound is muted, and voices are often too soft to be heard or unclear enough to be understood. It was often a question of what language the principals were speaking. Jamaicans may have a somewhat laid-back, lazy speech pattern, but this is a film in which voices and lines must be heard and understood.
Marley identified as Rasta. During the fifties, young black men in Jamaica and Africa picked up this spiritual belief and grew dreadlocks, smoked marijuana, and wore woolen caps and listened to reggae music.. However, just before he died in 1981, at the age of thirty-six, Marley converted to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.
The film scored big on bringing to light the dangers of Melanoma, a sometimes deadly form of skin cancer. Marley’s was not the typical kind of Melanoma but a rare form called Acral Lentiginous Melanoma or ALM—genetic factors more often cause this cancer and target people of color. Marley lived four years after his diagnosis, but he did minimal standard treatment to attempt a cure.
This latest film is at least the second to highlight the life and music of Bob Marley. Although it misses the target in essential ways to bring the story to life, it was filled with his music. That is a treat. And we all left the theater singing ‘One love, One love, Let’s get together and feel all right!” That would be great, wouldn’t it?
Now Playing in Theaters Nationwide
