★★☆☆☆Thurgood Marshall was the young firebrand civil rights lawyer who became the first African-American Supreme Court justice. So you might expect this biopic to tell the story of how he defended falsely accused black men from within a hostile white legal system. Instead, the makers of this syrupy and profoundly specious film pick the one criminal case (about the rape of a wealthy woman, played by Kate Hudson) in which Marshall (Chadwick Boseman) is bizarrely banned from speaking by the judge (James Cromwell). So all the attention naturally falls on to Marshall’s fellow attorney, Sam Friedman (Josh Gad). Friedman is a noble if unfulfilled white man who thankfully finds purpose, throughout the movie, by becoming a saviour for helpless, voiceless, useless black people.

Source: The Times October 19, 2017 23:02 UTC