'Bob Marley: One Love' review: Kingsley Ben-Adir is rock solid as Marley, but biopic is unsteady
Kingsley Ben-Adir as Bob Marley and Lashana Lynch as Rita Marley in "Bob Marley: One Love." Credit: Paramount Pictures/Chiabella James
PLOT The life story of the reggae icon.
CAST Kingsley Ben-Adir, Lashana Lynch
RATED PG-13 (drug use, brief violence)
LENGTH 1:47
WHERE Area theaters
BOTTOM LINE Kingsley Ben-Adir delivers a rock-solid performance in an unsteady biopic.
Everyone likes Bob Marley, right? And I mean everyone: hippie girls, frat boys, punk rockers, classic rockers — few musical artists have enjoyed such widespread appeal. A weed-smoking groover and a passionate revolutionary at once, Marley turned reggae music into global pop and became a rare Black star in a white rock world. His death in 1981, at the age of 36 from a rare form of cancer, did nothing to diminish his popularity: The posthumous collection “Legend” — the one with “Get Up, Stand Up,” “I Shot the Sheriff” and the inescapable “Jamming” — has sold 25 million copies worldwide.
“Bob Marley: One Love,” a biopic of the Jamaican icon, doesn’t fully explain this phenomenon. Produced by Marley’s children Ziggy and Cedella, it’s a worshipful treatment that touches on many pivotal moments but lacks context and detail. That said, its star, Kingsley Ben-Adir, reminds us that Marley had a major advantage over reggae contemporaries like Jimmy Cliff and Peter Tosh: sex appeal.
From our first glimpse of Ben-Adir as Marley — brooding, Dylan-like, at a hectic press conference — it’s clear that we’re in for a standout performance. The screenplay, by director Reinaldo Marcus Green and three others, wants to cast Marley as a Rastafarian mystic guided by the muses of music and peace. But Ben-Adir (who played a nuanced Malcolm X in “One Night in Miami”) uses his lean frame, loose dreadlocks and pre-Cobain scruff to bring out Marley‘s rock ‘n’ roll soul. Though he mostly lip-syncs to studio tracks and live recordings, Ben-Adir makes Marley come alive in every scene.
Otherwise, Green’s unsteady direction throws the movie off-rhythm. (Green seemed much more assured steering the Will Smith vehicle “King Richard.”) We see many of Marley’s highs and lows — his childhood as the discarded son of a British officer, a terrifying shooting incident at his home and the world-dominating triumph of “Exodus,” his 1977 album with the Wailers — but jumbled flashbacks and dream sequences interrupt the narrative flow. Much time is spent on Marley's performance at the 1976 Smile Jamaica Concert, but, oddly, his galvanizing set at the 1978 One Love Peace Concert — during which he united the country's warring leaders onstage — zips by as a news clip.
Marley's wife and musical collaborator, Rita (a very good Lashana Lynch), gives the movie some much-needed dramatic heft, hinting at the singer's infidelities and chafing under his mounting fame. Fans will enjoy seeing two sons play their Wailer fathers, including — poignantly — bassist Aston “Family Man” Barrett, who died earlier this month. James Norton plays Chris Blackwell, who exported reggae around the world via his Island Records label. Still, “Bob Marley: One Love” feels like a missed opportunity. If this movie had shown us its subject as a product of his times, we could have better understood how he helped to define them.
