Considering all of the rock biographies we’ve gotten in recent years, you’d think a film about Reggae icon Bob Marley might be more than a paint-by-numbers selection.
Alas, “Bob Marley: One Love” glosses over much of the man’s history and doesn’t begin to tap into his impact on the music industry.
Basically, this is a two-year look at his life and how he fought to bring warring sides together.
Even that, though, is fairly sketchy.
To his credit, director Reinaldo Marcus Green uses plenty of Marley songs and an attractive Kingsley Ben-Adir to play the part.
What he doesn’t include is necessary information about Marley’s family life, his enemies list and that wonky toe that apparently led to widespread cancer. Wikipedia tells more than this film.
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Since family members were involved in the film’s production, there was obviously a desire to make sure some of the seams didn’t show. But when whole swatches of Marley’s life are missing, it’s hard to get a sense of the crazy quilt that was his life.
Films like “Rocketman,” “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Elvis” did much more to find the fabric of their musicians’ lives. This tosses a scarf in the air and hopes it lands.
When there’s an assassination attempt on Marley’s life, he manages to escape with a wrist injury. Wife Rita (Lashana Lynch), however, is shot in the head. Two days later, both are on stage. How was that possible? That’s where “One Love” goes wrong.
We get the family’s determination and grit. What we don’t see is why he’s a marked man in Jamaica or who all those kids are that rush to meet him behind his Graceland-like gates.
The writing process is a little sketchy as well. Ben-Adir tosses out a great lyric and, suddenly, it’s a song. But all those hits couldn’t have been as divinely inspired. Did he spend days in a studio or noodle on a guitar?
That insight might have made “One Love” more than a walk-through for Ben-Adir. He gets a couple of testy moments but, for the most part, goes with the flow. Green also doesn’t explain who some of the hangers-on are and what their role is in his desire to flee, then return to Jamaica.
Like “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “One Love” is best when it’s on stage. The dervish that enthralled thousands of arena fans is here in bits and pieces. The loving dad comes out in car rides.
A scene between Bob and Rita, when she’s trying to convince him to wear a ring that was given as a gift, is the most heartfelt. It offers a moment of pause and a hint at what might have been.
“Bob Marley: One Love” should have had the same life as the footage that arrives in the credits. There – like so many similarly-themed films – you get more about the man in five minutes than you got in the previous 90.
Movies in a minute with film critic Bruce Miller
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Bruce Miller is editor of the Sioux City Journal.
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