‘Bob Marley: One Love’ Review: Another Empty Musical Biopic
While Lashana Lynch’s supporting portrayal of Rita Marley breathes life into One Love, Reinaldo Marcus Green’s latest biopic joins the pantheon of empty spectacles designed to sell records.
What is ‘Bob Marley: One Love’ about? When the movie begins, director Reinaldo Marcus Green posits the story in the middle of Bob Marley’s (Kingsley Ben-Adir) rising career as a reggae singer who wants to bridge the gap between the two opposing forces in Jamaica and strive for peace. The opening text informs us that Jamaica is in complete political turmoil in the years after they gained independence from the United Kingdom, and tensions are especially rising when Marley wants to do a concert to promote peace in the world and counter political violence.
Two days before the Smile Jamaica concert, Marley and his wife Rita (Lashana Lynch) are brutally shot, but the singer vows that the show must go on to overcome the violence occurring in Jamaica. You would think the movie would be about Marley attempting to promote peace while the political climate in Jamaica is unstable, but it then swerves into a completely different direction with the making of his magnum opus: Exodus.
Marley then goes on a world tour, with the movie shifting in another direction to discuss his marriage with Rita, his cancer diagnosis, flashbacks to his Rastafarian roots, and the One Love Peace Concert, to which the film ends abruptly. But it’s at that moment when Bob Marley: One Love feels like it’s just beginning to showcase the might of the singer’s legend, whose connections to Rastafarian religion and a tormented past make him a unique figure to peer into.
But Green has no idea where to position his biopic and would rather this film be a highlight reel of his highs and lows, without ever asking the fundamental question that any biopic should answer: who is Bob Marley beyond his legendary public façade? With cinematographer Robert Elswit, Green attempts to give some clues in a certain direction through flashbacks of him as a young boy running away from fields on fire while being pursued by a British colonizer, and consistently alternates between his past and present life to give a general idea of his musical talents.
But he never goes deep enough in any direction, whether through his childhood, political positions, or artistic creation. His greatest-ever album, Exodus, is reduced to montages of Marley writing, playing guitar, and singing with The Wailers while smoking copious amounts of ganja. Oh, and getting the idea of Exodus from the title of an Otto Preminger film without much thought beyond that.
There isn’t a single scene where we go beyond the usual tropes of musical biopics and see what Marley wanted to convey with his peace-loving anthems, or at least give clues to the significance of his tunes, beyond a show-reel of his greatest hits in an attempt to sell his albums (while omitting his best song, Could You Be Loved? A criminal offense.) And there isn’t a “greatest hit” used smartly that would emotionally raise the film’s stakes, but rather on a Spotify shuffle in the hopes that the audience jam to the music and forget the screenwriting and directorial ineptitudes on display.
It’s a shame how woefully miscast Ben-Adir is. He may nail the Marley mannerisms, but it takes far more than that to portray the figure in a thoughtful light. Simply imitating the man is a dull way for audiences to attach themselves to the character because we don’t perceive his complexity. For Ben-Adir, and by extension, Reinaldo Marcus Green, Bob Marley is a popular figure who existed and changed the music landscape. Nothing more. Nothing less. That’s how they consistently present him, through a CliffsNotes biopic that wants to get as many snippets of Marley’s short-lived stardom on film before its abrupt end. No insight, no exploration of Jamaica’s intense sociopolitical climate. Nothing.
One Love’s only saving grace is Lashana Lynch’s emotionally charged portrayal of Rita Marley. Despite being severely underwritten, Lynch makes the most of her limited screentime through a towering, powerful turn as Marley’s wife. Her eyes convey everything she has to say about him, loving the family she built with him, only to despise his current state once he becomes a worldwide star. Those scenes are the most interesting, if only for Lynch’s impeccable screen presence. She’s never given a lousy performance, despite some of the movies she starred in not giving her the roles she deserves to have.
Beyond that, however, Bob Marley: One Love only exists as a promotion of Bob Marley’s timeless music to spike CD and record sales. There isn’t a single interesting scene in Marcus Green’s movie, with a comically stilted performance from Kingsley Ben-Adir making the legendary status of Bob Marley look like a bad parody of the character rather than a serious exploration of the man behind the music. Like Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, it’s another musical biopic that fails to ask who its central figure is, leaving us to wonder exactly what the point of all of this is.