Foxx does his best work in a decade. For the charismatic Jordan, who puts in a tone-setting nuanced turn here, Just Mercy arrives between Creed II and Tom Clancy's Without Remorse. Let's hope he sticks with the "one for them, one for me" formula.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 11, 2021

"Just Mercy" is solid, meat-and-potatoes docudrama filmmaking, if you don't mind a first-rate story of systemic injustice undercut by second-rate dialogue.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 11, 2021

Unlike many movies "based on a true story," "Just Mercy" sticks close to the facts of the case - for the simple reason that the facts are drama enough.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 11, 2021

It's both rage-inducing and awe-inspiring; the courage conveyed by the protagonists is a balm on the sting of injustice.

| Feb 11, 2021

It's competently made... Thought has been put into this production, and again, I'm completely a hundred percent on the side of everything it has to say. I just don't think it's a very good movie.

| Original Score: 6.5/10 | Mar 19, 2020

Just Mercy is a deeply moving film, a human story about injustice and justice and how intangible and ephemeral they both really are.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 28, 2020

an earnest and important film about the still-festering sore of race in today's America - though when pitted against inveterate, sneering prejudice, its protagonist's one-note saintliness, however real, does not make for the most compelling drama

| Feb 6, 2020

It's steady and clear-headed, safe in the knowledge that truth is the ultimate humaniser.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 30, 2020

Just Mercy isn't interested in giving it a showy new spin. Instead the extraordinary, hope-inspiring true story is allowed to speak for itself, powered along by committed turns by Jordan and Brie Larson.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 29, 2020

It's good acting at its finest in this preaching to the choir "right to life" drama that might have worked had the filmmakers chosen to show the audience a little mercy by not constantly talking down to them.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jan 29, 2020

Jordan, however, is completely persuasive. The virtues possessed by Stevenson are all on the quiet side. His analytical flair is matched by his patience, his tenacity and his acuity.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 21, 2020

Still, by the time you reach the end - and realise how closely the film-makers have stuck to the facts - you won't care. That the truth will out is entertainment enough.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 21, 2020

Just Mercy isn't stylistically dazzling. The chronicle of racism is also familiar. But Cretton and his leads give the narrative an urgency and timeliness.

| Jan 18, 2020

In parts stolid, but solid nevertheless, Just Mercy is timely and important.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 18, 2020

This is a powerful drama about an important ongoing issue.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 18, 2020

The film has this kind of slow burn quality, it has a very good ensemble cast.

| Jan 17, 2020

[I]t's never less than engrossing. Even with the schmaltz.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 17, 2020

Jordan... has steel and energy in his part, and... Foxx... gives a beautifully modulated, unflashy and quietly moving performance, easily his best in at least a decade.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 16, 2020

The markers of the story are so familiar (venal law enforcement, leaned-on witnesses, the courtroom), it takes nerve to tell it this simply.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 15, 2020

The film's power lies in the brutality of its true story, and yet that narrative stays within fairly conventional bounds precisely because of Cretton's commitment to telling it.

| Jan 14, 2020