Bob Marley: One Love

You can tell just by the title of new biopic Bob Marley: One Love what kind of film you’re going to get.

By and large, the music biopic falls into one of two categories: the arthouse, ‘true’ depiction of events (Control, Walk the Line, Rocketman) and the slightly too commercialised, play to the back of the audience, mass appeal (and, therefore, a little sanitised) option like Bohemian Rhapsody and, sadly, this one (expecting the forthcoming Back to Black to fall here too.)

This is ignoring the true duds, the non-approved and rushed messes (Jimi: All Is by My Side, Stardust etc.)

And so it is that One Love falls into the middle category. This is the too-concise, a little bland, ‘non-message’ film of one of the most interesting and important musicians of them all.

It’s fine to release these ‘audience pleaser’ biopics and I’m sure they make the studios more money. But it feels especially disappointing that a film telling the story of Bob Marley, much as with Freddie Mercury before it, would feel so very un-‘rock n’ roll.’

Obviously, the soundtrack is awesome and the film really comes alive in all of its performance scenes. Depictions of the Wailers writing the songs and jamming are scenes the film could use more of.

Likewise, Kingsley Ben-Adir is excellent in the lead role, oozing star power and lighting up every scene.

The timeline of events is perfectly fine as well, keeping a handful of flashbacks to Marley’s earlier life but focusing on his commercial peak, assassination attempt and Jamaican peace concerts.

Despite this, it is just a little formulaic, a little top-line heavy and a little too obvious.

Showing us the star quality of an individual is fine but we know how great they are, we want to scrape the surface a little and ‘feel’ something.

If the music can do this, the film should too.

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