Bob Mar­ley: One Love review – a low-calo­rie music bio

They real­ly should’ve called this one ​“Redemp­tion Song” in that it’s a film that works dou­ble-time to file down and buff the rough edges of the late roots-reg­gae sage, Bob Mar­ley. Reinal­do Mar­cus Green’s fol­low-up to his like­able award sea­son fix­ture, King Richard, is hagiog­ra­phy 101, with the major­i­ty of its focus trained on the fruits of its charis­mat­ic subject’s cre­ative genius and with zero inter­est in get­ting to the juicy par­tic­u­lars of his leg­end status.

It’s a bio­graph­i­cal film where, to ask ​“why?” in regard to Marley’s some­times obscure­ly-moti­vat­ed actions would risk plac­ing him in an ambigu­ous light. And so we instead trot through a series of high­ly man­i­cured and stage-man­aged Wiki hit points and pause every few min­utes for a musi­cal inter­lude. Yes, there are plea­sures to be had from sit­ting in a cin­e­ma and hear­ing Bob Mar­ley hits blast­ed at 100 deci­bels, but you can do that at home with a decent record play­er and even with some on-brand recre­ation­al drugs to hand.

Kings­ley Ben-Adir dons dreads and an undu­ly slick goa­tee to play the big man him­self, and while he does well to nail the thick Jamaican patois and Marley’s rous­ing deliv­ery of both lyrics and speech, it nev­er feels more than cos­play, par­tic­u­lar­ly down to the unfor­tu­nate fact that he sim­ply looks noth­ing like the real Mar­ley. Lashana Lynch pro­vides both emo­tion­al ener­gy and dra­mat­ic heft as his semi-estranged wife Rita Mar­ley, yet a trio of big, impor­tant dia­logue scenes between the pair lack the nec­es­sary con­text and detail to tru­ly hit home.

In many ways, with One Love Mar­ley has been cyn­i­cal­ly Bohemi­an Rhap­sodised, in that the over­all struc­ture is laid out ear­ly on (in fact, it’s spelled out with an inter-title) with the intend­ed cli­max being his career defin­ing One Love Peace Con­cert, held in Trench­town in 1978, orches­trat­ed a view to heal­ing the gap­ing polit­i­cal rifts that had plunged Jamaica into fac­tion­al vio­lence (with Mar­ley him­self the vic­tim of a shoot­ing). That the film has cho­sen to empha­sise Marley’s hero­ism and polit­i­cal import before it has even start­ed puts, if not a down­er on pro­ceed­ings, then it cer­tain­ly negates any sense of surprise.

And because the film is so loath to address any­thing that might be deemed con­tro­ver­sial in Marley’s life, it leaves things open for the view­er to spec­u­late in bad faith. His almost-total dis­re­gard for his chil­dren is addressed indi­rect­ly by giv­ing exclu­sive weight to his self-imposed exile from Jamaica (in Lon­don, away from his kids) and the vast tour­ing sched­ule that came as a result of the mas­sive suc­cess of his 1977 LP, Exo­dus. An out­burst of vio­lence is framed as a noble bol­ster­ing of per­son­al ideals – specif­i­cal­ly his desire to tour Africa.

The best scene in the film by some way is the seem­ing­ly impromp­tu moment that the track ​‘Exo­dus’ was writ­ten in his Lon­don home, an invig­o­rat­ing shot of raw per­for­mance ener­gy that’s thank­ful­ly shorn of an ​“angle”. Yet there’s just this inces­sant focus on the already well-known mat­ter of his genius, includ­ing the pet­ty one-upman­ship of get­ting to dunk on the Island Records head of mar­ket­ing after sign­ing off the sup­pos­ed­ly-alien­at­ing album cov­er for Exodus.

The ques­tion of his untime­ly death at the age of 36 is dealt with in a super­fi­cial way, with the mak­ers try­ing hard to frame his deci­sion to not have the acral lentig­i­nous melanoma on his right big toe ampu­tat­ed as entire­ly log­i­cal with­in his creed and head­space. To have saved his own life would have been to renege on the teach­ing and beliefs that he poured into his music, and so his death was, appar­ent­ly, a mere con­tin­u­a­tion of his life’s work.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

By becom­ing a mem­ber you can sup­port our inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism and receive exclu­sive essays, prints, week­ly film rec­om­men­da­tions and more.