Just Mercy

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Movie
German title Just Mercy
Original title Just Mercy
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2019
length 137 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
JMK 12
Rod
Director Destin Daniel Cretton
script Destin Daniel Cretton, Andrew Lanham
production Asher Goldstein , Gil Netter
music Joel P. West
camera Brett Pawlak
cut Nat Sanders
occupation

Just Mercy is a court film by Destin Daniel Cretton , which premiered in September 2019 as part of the Toronto International Film Festival , was released in selected US cinemas on December 25, 2019 and in German cinemas on February 27, 2020. In the biography, the Walter McMillian case is taken up on the one hand, and the film shows the work of the defense attorney Bryan Stevenson , who represented McMillian in court , on the other .

action

After graduating from Harvard, all doors are actually open to the young African-American lawyer Bryan Stevenson . However, he decides against a lucrative job and goes to Alabama to defend the wrongly convicted with the support of Eva Ansley, who is in charge of the Equal Justice Initiative there. One of his first cases is that of Walter McMillian, known as Johnny D., who was sentenced to death in 1987 for the murder of an 18-year-old girl, but on the basis of a single testimony. In addition, the story of the alleged sequence of events shows inconsistencies. The fact that Johnny spent the day of the murder with his family, which 20 people can testify, was also ignored in the verdict. Before he was sentenced, Johnny had been put on death row to get used to it.

One of his other cases is that of Herb Richardson, who killed a woman in a bomb attack. Stevenson cannot prevent his execution, and so the Vietnam veteran dies in the electric chair.

Stevenson first applies for the case to be reopened. Although the only witness Myers revokes his testimony in the courtroom at the time, the judge ruled that the reopening of the case was refused. Stevenson is now asking the federal court to rule on the reopening and he gets a positive decision.

Biographical

“As a black man you are constantly suspected, accused, observed suspiciously, found guilty and even feared. The burden that blacks have to bear with it can only be understood if we carefully examine the history of racial injustice. "

- Bryan Stevenson in Without Mercy
Lawyer and civil rights activist Bryan Stevenson represented, among others, Walter McMillian, who was sentenced to death in 2012

The film is based on the partly biographical, partly autobiographical novel Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson , which received the NAACP Image Award for best literary work in the non-fiction category . The bestseller was published in 2015 in a translation by Jürgen Neubauer under the title Ohne Gnade. Police violence and arbitrariness of justice published in the USA . Born in 1959, the African-American law professor and civil rights activist was honored with the Four Freedoms Award in the category Freedom from Fear in 2011 . Stevenson, who has focused on saving the lives of death row inmates since the early 1980s, describes poignant fates in his book. The description of the last few minutes often went to the limit of the bearable, according to Michael Groth from Deutschlandfunk Kultur . The book says that as a black man you are constantly suspected, accused, observed suspiciously, found guilty and even feared. The burden blacks have to bear with it can only be understood if one thoroughly examines the history of racial injustice.

The people for whom Stevenson advocates as the founder and managing director of the "Equal Justice Initiative" (EJI), which rolls up the cases, are almost always extremely poor and very often of African American descent who receive no legal assistance or only pro forma through poorly paid and correspondingly poorly prepared public defenders are defended. Since 1989, Stevenson and his team have been committed to serving life sentences with no prospect of early release, as well as death row inmates convicted of murder. In the 26 years of its existence, the initiative has prevented more than 100 executions in Alabama alone.

In Just Mercy, Stevenson describes in detail the case of Walter McMillian , the first death row inmate, whose defense he took on after graduating from Harvard. He had been convicted of a murder five years earlier in the mid-1980s. The allegation that the African American killed a white woman in Alabama in 1987 was so absurdly constructed that McMillian was eventually acquitted and released from death row in 1993. He died lonely and confused in a social institution in 2013.

production

Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton , who co- wrote the script based on Stevenson's novel Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption with Andrew Lanham .

actor Voice actor role
Michael B. Jordan Nico Sablik Bryan Stevenson
Jamie Foxx Charles Rettinghaus Walter McMillian
Charmin Lee Anke Reitzenstein Alice Stevenson
Jacinte Blankenship Laurine Betz Christy Stevenson
Rob Morgan Oliver Stritzel Herbert Richardson
Terence Rosemore Sven Brieger Jimmy
CJ LeBlanc Kaze Uzumaki John McMillian

Michael B. Jordan took on the lead role of the young attorney and Harvard graduate Bryan Stevenson . Brie Larson plays Eva Ansley, who oversees the Equal Justice Initiative on site, Jamie Foxx plays the sentenced to death Walter McMillian, whose defense they are trying to defend. O'Shea Jackson took on the role of Anthony Ray Hinton, who is also on death row, and Karen Kendrick plays McMillian's wife, Minnie. Tim Blake Nelson plays Ralph Myers, Rob Morgan plays the death row inmate Herbert 'Herb' Richardson.

The German synchronization was based on a dialogue book by Sven Hasper and the dialogue direction by Axel Malzacher on behalf of FFS Film- & Fernseh-Synchron GmbH, Berlin.

Filming took place in Conyers , Georgia and Montgomery , Alabama. Brett Pawlak was the cameraman and Nat Sanders was the film editor , most recently for Beale Street and Moonlight by Barry Jenkins . Cretton had worked with Sanders on his film Castle of Glass . The production design is by Sharon Seymour , who also worked on the glass lock .

The score was composed by Joel P West . The soundtrack, which comprises a total of 18 pieces of music, was released for download by WaterTower Music on December 13, 2019.

The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 6, 2019 . Shortly before, Warner Bros. presented the first trailer. Further festival participation followed in London, Chicago and the Hamptons, among others. It was released in selected US cinemas on December 25, 2019 and in German cinemas on February 27, 2020. In the wake of the death of George Floyd in late May 2020, the film will be loaned for free in the United States throughout June 2020, according to Warner Bros. to inform the American people more about the systematic racism in the country's history and about change to advance.

reception

Age rating

In the US, the film was rated PG-13 by the MPAA . In Germany, the film was approved by the FSK from the age of 12. The statement of reasons for the release states that even if the film addresses the omnipresent racial discrimination and the inhumanity of the death penalty , the story is told calmly and sensitively, with a focus on the differentiated main characters. The emotional intensity of the staging with scenes of the hopelessness of existence on death row and the injustice of the authorities could sometimes overwhelm children under the age of 12.

Reviews and grossing results

So far, the film has won over 83 percent of all Rotten Tomatoes critics and received an average rating of 7 out of a possible 10 points.

Director and screenwriter Destin Daniel Cretton (2019)

Variety's Owen Gleiberman writes that in a scene where a death row inmate strapped to a chair and The Old Rugged Cross is played over the prison's sound system and prisoners hit the bars of their cells with their tin cups, one of the movie's horrors becomes special clearly demonstrated. He describes death, which is part of this killing system like death row, as a sick extension of slavery and calls Just Mercy a civil rights drama. Destin Daniel Cretton not only draws a portrait of injustice, but also shows how racism works. In his role as Johnny, Jamie Foxx remembered that he is a great actor. O'Shea Jackson appears in the role of Anthony Ray Hinton completely different than you could see him before, and Tim Blake Nelson also delivers a great performance.

Michael Meyns from the Gilde deutscher Filmkunsttheater remarks that Cretton decidedly not serving the patterns of typical court films in a deliberately calm film , and after just a few minutes there was no doubt about the innocence of William McMilian, who in the end did not have surprising witnesses or a particularly brilliant one Pleading is proven, as is usually the case in this genre. Instead, Cretton's gaze is directed at the big picture, at a society that keeps telling itself that justice is its greatest good and hardly realizes how deeply prejudiced and racism are embedded in it. The fact that the characters in the film devour the humiliation makes Just Mercy a powerful film, continues Meyns: “The injustices of this judicial system are so obvious that it is enough to name them calmly and tirelessly to reform to fight."

The film critic Antje Wessels writes that Just Mercy holds up an oppressive mirror to parts of the US population, because even if the real screen events were a few decades ago, the racism that was openly lived here has not changed in many parts of the US to this day. In terms of staging, Cretton allows himself only a few artistic tricks. Instead, he mainly lets the underlying injustice speak for itself in Just Mercy , and when the execution of the death penalty is shown on the electric chair in almost real time , the filmmaker does not have to hold the camera at it, says Wessels. She sums it up: "With Just Mercy , director Destin Daniel Cretton delivers a narrative, though not very spectacular, but all the more intensely played drama about a sick US legal system, at the end of which nobody should come up with the idea that the death penalty is a good invention . "

The film's worldwide revenue from theatrical screenings is $ 50.3 million.

Awards (selection)

Michael B. Jordan at the premiere for the film at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival

African-American Film Critics Association Awards 2019

  • Best Supporting Actor Award ( Jamie Foxx )
  • Inclusion in the 10 Best Films of 2019

American Black Film Festival 2020

  • Nomination for film of the year

Black Reel Awards 2020

  • Nomination for best film
  • Nomination for Best Supporting Actor (Jamie Foxx)
  • Nomination for Best Ensemble (Carmen Cuba)

Chicago International Film Festival 2019

Heartland International Film Festival 2019

  • Received the Audience Choice Award - Special Presentation (Destin Daniel Cretton)
  • Received the Overall Audience Choice Award (Destin Daniel Cretton)

NAACP Image Awards 2020

  • Nomination for best film
  • Nomination for Best Screenplay (Destin Daniel Cretton, Andrew Lanham)
  • Nomination for Best Actor (Michael B. Jordan)
  • Nomination for Best Young Actor ( Rob Morgan )
  • Nomination for Best Supporting Actor (Jamie Foxx)
  • Nomination for the best cast

National Board of Review Awards 2019

Palm Springs International Film Festival Film Awards 2020

  • Received the Spotlight Award (Jamie Foxx)

Screen Actors Guild Awards 2020

literature

  • Bryan Stevenson: Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption , Spiegel & Grau, 2014. ISBN 9780812984965
  • Bryan Stevenson: Without mercy. Police violence and arbitrariness of justice in the USA , Piper, Munich 2015. ISBN 978-3-492-05722-6

Web links

Commons : Just Mercy  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Certificate of Release for Just Mercy . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 196003 / K). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  2. ↑ Age rating for Just Mercy . Youth Media Commission .
  3. ↑ a b c Owen Gleiberman: Toronto Film Review: 'Just Mercy'. In: Variety, September 6, 2019.
  4. ↑ a b Michael Saager: The enforcement company. In: fluter, December 25, 2015.
  5. ↑ a b Michael Groth: Bryan Stevenson "Without Mercy": Plea for humanity. In: Deutschlandfunk Kultur, January 16, 2016.
  6. ↑ a b c Dave McNary: 'Just Mercy,' 'Ford V Ferrrari' Tapped for Hamptons Film Festival. In: Variety, 23 August 2019.
  7. ↑ 'Just Mercy' soundtrack details. In: filmmusicreporter.com, December 12, 2019.
  8. ↑ Garth Franklin: First Trailer: Michael B. Jordan In "Just Mercy". In: darkhorizons.com, September 3, 2019.
  9. ↑ Start dates Germany In: insidekino.com. Retrieved December 21, 2019.
  10. ↑ Anthony D'Alessandro: Warner Bros Makes 'Just Mercy' Available For Free In June To Support Blackout Tuesday. In: Deadline.com . June 2, 2020, accessed June 2, 2020 .
  11. ↑ a b Just Mercy. In: Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved January 13, 2020.
  12. ↑ https://www.spio-fsk.de/?seitid=2737&tid=469&Vers=1&FGID=5485
  13. ↑ Michael Meyns: Just Mercy. In: programmkino.de. Retrieved January 23, 2020.
  14. ^ Antje Wessels: Just Mercy. In: wessels-filmkritik.com, February 15, 2020.
  15. ↑ Just Mercy. In: boxofficemojo.com. Retrieved March 19, 2020.
  16. ↑ Abid Rahman: Jordan Peele's 'Us' Named Best Film by the African-American Film Critics Association. In: The Hollywood Reporter, December 10, 2019.
  17. ↑ American Black Film Festival Announces 2020 'Movie of the Year' Nominees. In: broadwayworld.com, December 18, 2019.
  18. ^ Wilson Morales: 20th Annual Black Reel Awards - Nominees Announced. In: blackfilm.com, December 11, 2019.
  19. ↑ Audience Choice Awards Announced For 55th Chicago International Film Festival. In: chicagofilmfestival.com. Retrieved October 30, 2019.
  20. ↑ 28th Annual Heartland International Film Festival Announces Filmmaker Award winners. In: wbiw.com, October 22, 2019.
  21. ↑ Erik Anderson: 2020 NAACP Awards: Billy Porter, Lizzo, Regina King, Angela Bassett up for Entertainer of the Year. In: awardswatch.com, January 9, 2020.
  22. ↑ Marianne Garvey: National Board of Review names 'The Irishman' best film of 2019. In: cnn.com, December 4, 2019.
  23. ↑ Palm Springs International Film Festival Film Awards. In: psfilmfest.org, January 2, 2020.