Respond to these rapid questions in our Just Mercy Quiz and we will tell you which Just Mercy character you are. Play it now.
In support of a critical American movement that preserves Black voices, we’re republishing this post on the site. Click here to see a growing resource list that includes information on how to give, connect with activists, learn more about the protests, and discover anti-racism literature. On Amazon, Google Play, and YouTube, “Just Mercy” is presently available to watch for free. #BlackLivesMatter.
“Just Mercy” has the unfortunate misfortune of being released at the same time as “Clemency,” a more daring and better picture set on a Death Row jail. Though the main characters’ motivations differ—Michael B. Jordan’s activist Bryan Stevenson is trying to get prisoners off death row, while Alfre Woodard’s warden Bernadine Williams supervises their executions—both actors have moments of stillness in which they appear to physically vibrate from the internal trauma they’re suppressing. This is essential to Woodard’s role, but it feels more like an actor trying to rise above the paper-thin portrayal he has been given for Jordan. Unless you focus on Jordan’s physicality, Stevenson is a convincing bore because he is so noble and faultless. When you look into his eyes, you can see him attempting to convey something that the film’s cautious tone forbids: a sense of Black wrath.
The bulk of films on African-American suffering have always been calibrated the way “Just Mercy” is, with an eye to not offending White spectators with anything slightly like Black wrath, since the days of 1950s-era message pictures. We can be beaten, raped, enslaved, shot by police for no cause, victimized by a legal system stacked against us, or any other number of real-world calamities, but God help us if a character is enraged about it. Instead, we get to be noble and grasp on to His unchanging hand while the tireless Black lady on the soundtrack plays “hmmm-HMMMMM!” to represent our agony. This film has a lot of “hmmm-HMMMMM”-ing, to the point where I couldn’t help but giggle. These clichés have become ridiculously overused. That poor woman’s lips must be exhausted from all that humming between this, the equally mediocre “Harriet,” and the terrible “The Best of Enemies.”
Movies like “Just Mercy” spoon-feed the spectator everything in easy consumable morsels, assuming you know nothing or, worse, don’t know any better. They feel that in order to win over bigots’ hearts and minds, you can’t show any complexity because it will undermine the “teachable moment” the film is supposed to offer. It’s sad that these instructional moments are frequently offered in the same, same manner, as if they were designed for students who are constantly failing the same grade. To make matters worse, White perpetrators of injustice are frequently one-note villains, allowing the viewer to claim plausible deniability: “I can’t be racist since I’m not as awful as THAT guy!” Granted, this is a period piece true story, and the picture can’t go too far with dramatic license with its real-life characters, but director and co-writer Destin Daniel Cretton gives their personas an all-too-familiar formula. Also, you will find out which character are you in this Just Mercy quiz.
Just Mercy Quiz
Despite my criticisms, I admire how far “Just Mercy” is ready to go in terms of interrogation. It’s a lot, and I think you deserve some credit for bringing these topics up at all. Adapting Stevenson’s memoir, Cretton and his co-writer Andrew Lanham address activists for Death Row inmates, the value of White vs. Black lives, veterans with untreated PTSD, corrupt law enforcement, justice system imbalances, and, in a subplot anchored by Tim Blake Nelson, the idea that poor people are victimized by law enforcement regardless of their race. Also, you must try to play this Just Mercy quiz.
I recall seeing the “60 Minutes” profile recreated here, in which Stevenson brings the case of Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx) to the public’s attention. McMillian was on Death Row for the murder of a young White woman, a crime he claimed he didn’t commit. Despite the testimony of 17 witnesses who testified to McMillian’s location at the time of the murder, an Alabama jury of 11 White men and one Black man found him guilty mainly on the testimony of an ex-con called Ralph Meyers (Nelson). After Stevenson’s successful attempt to have McMillian’s case reopened ended with a judge named after Robert E. Lee dismissing Myers’ admission that he lied under oath in the first trial, he took his case to CBS. All of this is entirely plausible in actual life, but in this film, both the corrupt Sheriff Tate (Michael Harding) and the district attorney are depicted as cartoon villains acting on their own rather than in service to a considerably more bigoted and corrupt system. Tate was re-elected numerous times after his role in McMillian’s railroading was uncovered, but you have to wait until the end credits to find out.
This crime occurred in Monroeville, Alabama, which is also the hometown of Harper Lee, author of “To Kill a Mockingbird.” I bring up Lee because her book, and its accompanying film version, are the epicenter of all the vexing stereotypes I discussed before. So it’s no surprise that Michael B. Jordan is cast as Atticus Finch in “Just Mercy.” Jordan, like Gregory Peck in that legendary performance, exudes presence, idealism, and righteousness. What’s absent is Peck’s dominating sense of authority, which isn’t Jordan’s fault in the least. Finch was an Alabama native with a paternal glow, whereas Stevenson is a fairly naive Yankee from Delaware trying to negotiate the ways of the Deep South.
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Brie Larson reteams with her “Short Term 12” director as Stevenson’s coworker Eva, but is given little to do other than be threatened once she re-opens McMillian’s case. Nonetheless, she extracts a lot of personality from the simple act of smoking a cigarette. McMillian, played by Foxx, is also flatly written, although he excels in the few scenes he has with fellow Death Row convict Herbert Richardson (Rob Morgan). Richardson’s arc is the one truly successful element of “Just Mercy,” and Morgan’s excellent, heartbreaking performance is being unfairly overshadowed by Foxx’s this awards season. Richardson, a Vietnam veteran with serious PTSD, killed a small child when a bomb he set on her doorstep exploded. Richardson, unlike McMillian, is guilty of the crime and believes he should be on Death Row. He was unable to seek treatment for his mental health concerns before to committing his crime, and the prosecutor concealed this information from the jury during the trial. But you shouldn’t waste any more time and start this Just Mercy quiz.
Morgan shades his small part with such beautiful, subtle gestures that he becomes the only character who feels fleshed out, complex and real. You feel not only his sense of guilt but the demons that infected his brain during combat. His last, horrific scene is so well acted that it still haunts me; it’s the only time the viewer is forced to be uncomfortably conflicted, to think about the complicated nature of injustice. I wish the rest of “Just Mercy” had that level of jarring complexity instead of relying on easy tropes to deliver its message.
On Amazon, Google Play, and YouTube, “Just Mercy” is presently available to watch for free.
For more personality quizzes check this: Little Women Quiz.
