We do have a lengthy cast list here but One Love is anchored/carried by 2 performances. Kingsley Ben-Adir has the screen presence to carry this project, he nails the accent and even has a lot of physicality to his work in One Love. The emotion he brings to the table helps you understand why Bob Marley was idolized and beloved by so many. I wish the movie had explored more periods of Bob Marley's life just so we could have seen what Kingsley would have brought to them. I expected Ben-Adir to be good but the more surprising but equally impressive acting came from Lashana Lynch as Bob Marley's wife Rita. I've only seen Lashana previously in tentpole-esque studio fare (No Time to Die and Captain Marvel) but she transforms in One Love and I hope both her and Kingsley get some awards consideration. To the movie's credit, both Bob and Rita are presented as complex and multi-layered characters and represent the clay that Kingsley and Lashana moulded beautifully with their work in One Love.
It's a more minor note but one of the surprise boxes One Love ticks is that I think it's filmed/shot well. The camera work highlights some of Jamaica's natural beauty but also shows some of the less camera friendly aspects of it as well. The CGI isn't top-notch but it wasn't bad enough to draw attention to. I have a friend who I saw the movie with who visited Jamaica and she was calling out parts of the country she toured in her vacation. I can't call One Love a visual tour de force but there were shots littered throughout the movie that caught my attention and I think it's worth crediting the team for their work in this film.
So far, you may be confused on why my rating for Bob Marley: One Love is so low and it does have a lot of notable pluses. But the unfortunate truth of the matter is that despite the acting and cinematography being striking and stimulating, the odd structure the movie insists on using to reveal its narrative really hampers the proceedings. My best friend compared the movie's structure as counting to 10 as if it were 1,4,7,2,5. The film is disorganized and almost confusing unless you're intimately familiar with Marley's life (I'm passively familiar at best, I did like some of his music and I knew he passed away relatively young). Subplots are created and dropped (e.g. Marley's greedy business manager, the drama surrounding Marley's father, the political unrest in Jamaica in the mid 1970s) frequently and it helps stop the movie from gelling together appropriately. It also dampens the impact of Marley's passing because the fact he's terminally ill is introduced so late that you can't get emotionally invested. There's a pretty concrete formula about how to operate in this genre and while I admire the screenwriter's attempt to try something different, it does the movie a disservice instead.
Everything to create a compelling and informative film about Bob Marley's life was here. We have some terrific performances, some interesting cinematography and Marley and his story are inspiring and his message still prescient even today. But the result of One Love is a puzzling and mildly disappointing misfire, I understand that the studio and the creative team wanting to circumvent the formula but you still have to justify it by showing us a new angle or creating something memorable. Bob Marley: One Love as a product is fine but I think its subject deserved a better movie. I'd really rate One Love somewhere between a 6-7 but I rounding down because of what they squandered in this production. One Love is still worth a watch but as we frequently get some really fantastic movies in this genre, I'd recommend it only to Marley fans as there's better films about other musicians available for your viewing pleasure.
