Bob Marley: One Love

Bob Marley: One Love is a thoroughly generic biopic told in an entertaining fashion. It starts off with an interesting idea focusing on a specific part of Marley's life and honing in on the unifying power of his music before quickly becoming the kind of biopic that's been done so many times before, frustratingly saving the most powerful moment for the archive footage at the end.

Even when this genre is at its blandest the central performance is rarely the problem and that's absolutely the case here. Kingsley Ben-Adir gives a wonderful performance that never strays into parody and is the only time the film comes close to making Marley feel human. It's also great that Lashana Lynch is given so much, supporting whilst still getting some spotlight.

Reinaldo Marcus Green's direction ends the film a little too early and uses a flashback heavy structure to hit all the required beats but it's all done in a technically competent and very serious way which helps. The soundtrack is obviously a major highlight however the score by Kris Bowers is an unexpected highlight thanks to its very dramatic nature.

We do have a lengthy cast list here but One Love is anchored/carried by 2 performances. Kingsley Ben-Adir has the screen presence to carry this project, he nails the accent and even has a lot of physicality to his work in One Love. The emotion he brings to the table helps you understand why Bob Marley was idolized and beloved by so many. I wish the movie had explored more periods of Bob Marley's life just so we could have seen what Kingsley would have brought to them. I expected Ben-Adir to be good but the more surprising but equally impressive acting came from Lashana Lynch as Bob Marley's wife Rita. I've only seen Lashana previously in tentpole-esque studio fare (No Time to Die and Captain Marvel) but she transforms in One Love and I hope both her and Kingsley get some awards consideration. To the movie's credit, both Bob and Rita are presented as complex and multi-layered characters and represent the clay that Kingsley and Lashana moulded beautifully with their work in One Love.

It's a more minor note but one of the surprise boxes One Love ticks is that I think it's filmed/shot well. The camera work highlights some of Jamaica's natural beauty but also shows some of the less camera friendly aspects of it as well. The CGI isn't top-notch but it wasn't bad enough to draw attention to. I have a friend who I saw the movie with who visited Jamaica and she was calling out parts of the country she toured in her vacation. I can't call One Love a visual tour de force but there were shots littered throughout the movie that caught my attention and I think it's worth crediting the team for their work in this film.

So far, you may be confused on why my rating for Bob Marley: One Love is so low and it does have a lot of notable pluses. But the unfortunate truth of the matter is that despite the acting and cinematography being striking and stimulating, the odd structure the movie insists on using to reveal its narrative really hampers the proceedings. My best friend compared the movie's structure as counting to 10 as if it were 1,4,7,2,5. The film is disorganized and almost confusing unless you're intimately familiar with Marley's life (I'm passively familiar at best, I did like some of his music and I knew he passed away relatively young). Subplots are created and dropped (e.g. Marley's greedy business manager, the drama surrounding Marley's father, the political unrest in Jamaica in the mid 1970s) frequently and it helps stop the movie from gelling together appropriately. It also dampens the impact of Marley's passing because the fact he's terminally ill is introduced so late that you can't get emotionally invested. There's a pretty concrete formula about how to operate in this genre and while I admire the screenwriter's attempt to try something different, it does the movie a disservice instead.

Everything to create a compelling and informative film about Bob Marley's life was here. We have some terrific performances, some interesting cinematography and Marley and his story are inspiring and his message still prescient even today. But the result of One Love is a puzzling and mildly disappointing misfire, I understand that the studio and the creative team wanting to circumvent the formula but you still have to justify it by showing us a new angle or creating something memorable. Bob Marley: One Love as a product is fine but I think its subject deserved a better movie. I'd really rate One Love somewhere between a 6-7 but I rounding down because of what they squandered in this production. One Love is still worth a watch but as we frequently get some really fantastic movies in this genre, I'd recommend it only to Marley fans as there's better films about other musicians available for your viewing pleasure.

The acting was good, the scenes regarding the music and the artistic creativity involved in the endeavor were good, and every scene individually was fine.

What this film lacks is actually direction. It felt disjointed and choppy from the very beginning. It was hard to keep straight what was going on and why. The motivations of events were hard to follow, and conflicts appeared and disappeared without a trace. The actual flow and arc were kind of non-existent in this movie.

I felt the scenes between on-screen Bob and Rita and Bob with the band were the absolute strength. There was chemistry there that felt natural and that felt like I was really getting a glimpse into Bob Marley at this period of his life.

It's so close to being a really good movie, but the lack of continuity in the storytelling robs it of reaching the potential.

I wish I knew superstar Bob Marley better after seeing the biopic, Bob Marley One Love, but I don't. For such a music legend, the greatest exponent of reggae and a tireless promoter of peace for Jamaica, director Reinaldo Marcus Green and his host of writers patch together impressive music and a few poignant scenes from 1976 to 78 into a whole that doesn't give the sense of his greatness before he died of cancer in 1981 at age 36.

As Marley, Kingsley Ben-Adir has the star power of the original Marley with a casual charisma that convinces us he could bring peace to the two warring factions in post-colonial Jamaica. Because Marley eventually leaves home to tour the world and land in London, we are limited in learning about the close connection to his homeland from his birth on.

A reason to see this unimpressive bio is to watch the inception of the album, Exodus, which Time Magazine called the best of the 20th century. As successful as that was, peace was not to be so, an impossible task even the great Marley couldn't pull off.

Lacking throughout is an intimate look into his psyche, such as we did get in the recent Oppenheimer. Both bios dwell on a few key years (a blessing rather than trying to depict the whole life), but One Love never goes deeply except in the successful scenes with his wife, Rita (Lashana Lynch), which have the kind of soul revealing power lacking in most other scenes which too often scan the surface.

The lesser dramatic revelations such as his passion for soccer, Africa, and the genesis of the simple Exodus album cover are well represented. Less so is insight into reggae while he lived in his homeland. The most we get serves just to verify that he was a charismatic cross between Mick Jagger and Freddie Mercury. The real Bob Marley is yet to be seen.

It's fine, just nothing all that memorable.

I had a pleasant enough time viewing 'Bob Marley: One Love', though it does kinda seem a bit hollow post-watch - as in I don't feel like I've learned much nor actually seen that much, the movie has like three noteworthy events but then that's kinda it. The music from those involved also didn't feel amazingly utilised, I guess they didn't want it to be too jukebox-y.

Kingsley Ben-Adir does well in the lead role as Bob Marley himself. I'm not a Marley superfan or anything close, I basically only know his biggest hits, but the resemblance of Ben-Adir seemed off to me - a thought that was only solidified when the real Marley appears via archive footage at the end. Perhaps that's just me, though.

Lashana Lynch gives a good performance, spearheading the rest of the cast who are alright; interesting to see James Norton, Michael Gandolfini too... even if I didn't realise it was Gandolfini until the credits. Overall, it does feel like the film only scratches the surface of Marley's life. I wanted more from it, but to be fair it is still a decent flick in my opinion.