Bob Marley: One Love review — Kingsley Ben-Adir's strong performance mired in bland biopic

While not as prevalent as the superhero movie, the music biopic is a genre that Hollywood has turned to a lot in the 21st century. We've seen movies that have covered the lives of iconic musicians like Johnny Cash (Walk the Line), Ray Charles (Ray) and Freddie Mercury (Bohemian Rhapsody). Its tropes were so prevalent the genre was parodied almost 20 years ago with Walk Hard. Bob Marley: One Love at least attempted something different.

Focusing on a three year period late in his life, it tried to distill how this specific time defined Marley's message of unity and love through his attempts to heal a divided Jamaica, as well as his prowess as a musician with the creation of his legendary album, Exodus. However, it never comes together as well as you'd hope and it ends up relying a bit too much on some of the tropes of its predecessors.

Before going into more depth on those though, I have to mention that Kingsley Ben-Adir is great as Marley. The actor disappears into the role and displays a magnetism that carries the movie. He is never better when displaying the emotional conflicts Marley was going through at the time. One scene in particular between him and Lashana Lynch, who plays Marley's wife Rita, is electric; whenever it is just the two of them this movie is at its best. The problem is there are only a handful of those scenes.

Directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green, who has co-writing credits with Terence Winter, Frank E. Flowers and Zach Baylin, Bob Marley: One Love gets some credit for not trying to tell the full story of Marley's life and career and pinpoint on a specific time frame they believe encapsulated what he meant, but they should have trusted it more.

Admittedly, I went into watching Bob Marley: One Love with little more than a surface knowledge of the legendary musician — I know his most famous songs but only a bit of his personal life beyond the fact that he was a Rastafarian. But even I was a bit annoyed that there was text explaining where Jamaica was politically when the movie begins in 1976 and literally saying that the series of events that follow would change Marley's life, especially because they do a decent job getting their biggest points across in those opening scenes. The text wasn't truly necessary and instead felt like they were spoon-feeding us the information.

Adding to that are flashback scenes to Marley's time as a child, his relationship with Rita and the beginning of their career. These scenes feel jammed in and don't offer much to the overall story.

Ultimately, this feels like a lack of confidence; possibly afraid that people like me would not feel like they understood Marley without a summary of the key events in his life. The unintended result is an unfocused story that never gets its full momentum.

Another area of disappointment was with the concerts. Outside of the initial unity concert, Marley conducts shortly after his assassination attempt, where the movie shows him having visions of his assailant, the performances shown are flat. The scenes where they are creating music are a bit more interesting, but not enough.

The use of Marley’s songs for the soundtrack, however, is splendid. His anthems maintain their power all these years later and keep the movie rolling along so it never feels completely stale.

The kernels of a stronger movie are present in Bob Marley: One Love, first and foremost in its two lead performances from Ben-Adir and Lynch, but the filmmakers went safe and traditional, which unfortunately leads to a mildly enjoyable, but ultimately forgettable movie.