On M List of Movie Reviews
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Marshall (2017)
Rate:
6
Viewed:
3/21
3/21:
Chadwick Boseman plays Thurgood Marshall?
Um, okay. Most people have no idea who he was or what he looked like, but take a moment to search online for a
picture of him. For a black man, it helps to be light-skinned to get where Thurgood Marshall got to in life, particularly
during the first half of 20th century. One of the best-known names in American legal history, his most famous case is
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka which successfully paved the way to school desegregation.
When Marshall came up, I thought it was going to be a biopic about the man himself, but the story turns
out to be something else: a small-potatoes court case in Bridgeport, Connecticut, concerning the alleged rape of
a white woman by a black man. Naturally enough, the gagged Thurgood Marshall wins the case with a stand-in Jewish white
lawyer speaking for him, and everybody cheers.
That's all well and great except it didn't happen this way. Sam Friedman was already a capable trial attorney, having
practiced law for fourteen years and handled most kinds of work. During the actual case, Sam was the architect of the defense,
and Thurgood Marshall sat next to him, taking notes throughout the trial only because he wasn't a licensed attorney in
Connecticut and therefore couldn't argue. The local newspaper covered it extensively, but there was little mention of
Thurgood Marshall. By the way, Sam was never beaten up by a mob of white people.
For the most part, Marshall is an okay but run-of-the-mill court movie in a To Kill a Mockingbird way, but I've
seen better in Law & Order. Two of the biggest mistakes are making everything be so squeaky-clean and the casting of
Katie Hudson (like I would believe her as a rape victim or an adult for that matter). The dialogue is okay, but it would've
been beneath Thurgood Marshall's dignity to utter profane words like "fuck you" to Sam. These people carried
themselves well back then.
All in all, instead of what Marshall presented, I would prefer a full-scale epic film of Thurgood Marshall's life.