Movie Review: Bob Marley: One Love

 

Hey everyone, my name is Anthony and welcome back to my Movie Review.

You know, I think watching movies based on true stories is now including a new elements in a pattern since I’ve watched some movies out there, it particular, movies based on real life musicians or even the bands. We had Bohemian Rhapsody with Queen, Rocketman with Elton John and Elvis with… Well, Elvis Presley. Though there are few others out there were existed that I miss like either “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story”, which is exclusive on Roku, until its available either physical or digitally, or going back further, we have The Doors in 1991 and few others out there if I miss something. But in today’s review, looks like we’re going down with one of the most important figure in both Jamaica and music industry, Bob Marley.

“Bob Marley: One Love” is a 2024 Biographical musical drama movie that was written/directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green, produced by Robert Teitel, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Ziggy Marley, Rita Marley, Cedella Marley and Brad Pitt (Wait What?! Brad Pitt?!) and co-written by Terence Winter, Frank E. Flowers, Zach Baylin.

The idea of the movie came from the Marley family, Bob’s son named Ziggy Marley stepped in to be involved with Paramount Pictures, since they announced for their movie take on the life of Bob Marley. Of course, it wasn't just Ziggy to be involved from the project, but also his family members like his sister Cedella and his mother Rita. Which is pretty fascinating that most movies are either the directors, the producers, the writers or even the studio. But here, it wasn’t just the latter, but also Marley family want to be involve from this project, which is pretty both good and again, fascinating, to either a family member or the bands themselves to be on the project, depending for the execution.

So, with all that said, will this movie follow nicely for the peace and love the late Bob Marley, or is One Love isn’t the rightful way to describing this movie?

Well, lets find out.

The Story

For a movie about Bob Marley’s message of peace, you think the story would make a promising history what we like to see for the whole life and band? Well, not as much…

It begins via text message about while Bob Marley was starting to forming their band for the journey in Jamaica, there one problem they’ve heard, its the political conflict in Jamaica between the Labor and People’s National, which the conflict will causing a concerning friction, including when Bob, his sister Rita and his band mates got shot from assassination attempt, but they’re somehow survived after being hospitalized, they went ahead for their concert, along with Bob showing his bullet wounds to sharing his fear that he doesn’t wanna be murdered again. Its up to Bob Marley to having a concert trip for the path of peace.

Yeah, the story itself is more focus on the rise of Bob Marley’s success and the path of peace in the later 70s, that’s a fine story that we all know I guess, but my biggest problem of the movie’s story is that the writing is just way too simple that its only gearing towards the rising reggae and Bob’s success and peace, making the story of his movie feels like it has a lack of substance, I like to see the origin of where did Bob became a musician star and his creation of his band “Bob Marley and The Wailers”, which it would’ve been nice to learn where did they begin, until we get the rising popularity of reggae and the peaceful message. But instead, the movie is focusing on the later year from the struggling life of Bob and his band-mates during their tour in Europe, it feels like they wanted to make easy what we like to see, but it feels like its too simple, too safe and lackluster for the movie’s core.

While its nice to see a movie’s dramatization of popularity of reggae and the path of peace, but movie’s writing is so lacking what we want more to learning than skipping all the way to the late 70s.

The Presentation

The movie’s budget costs $70M and despite the lacking, I think the movie’s presentation is… Fairly descent.

For starter, the location are pretty nice to filming, they’re basically filming on both London, England to Marley’s homeland, Jamaica. Especially with Jamaica, this place, while it may not look big and expensive town as either London or others, but it looks pretty nice and beautiful place, almost like we want to be in vacation and playing reggae music with Jamaicans to jammin’.

Even though the movie is pretty low, but the presentation of the quality and cinematography is actually pretty good looking. And even the music stage is also pretty nice, as they’re trying to following up from the actual stage.

Speaking of stage, the easiest highlight of the movie is the music, the music in the movie that they brought is also pretty nice to give listeners (myself included) a shot to listening Bob Marley’s classic songs from fun reggae music to music with a message of peace.

However, one nitpick I have is the overusing flashback of young Bob Marley running away from the fire before Bob is on stage. I know it was meant to clearing his stress before get on stage to play the music, I understand that even with a rare stage fright, we have confident to play the music for the crowd, but what’s with the repetitive flashback scenes?

While there’s not much else to say, since this is a not-so low budget movie, but at least it looks pretty good to look and listening at.

The Characters

Because of its oversimplified and lackluster writing, and I hate to say, it makes the characters also felt lacking, for the most parts.

Lets starts of our titular protagonist Bob Marley (played by Kingsley Ben-Adir), the band leader of his group, he was once a promising band leader for not just focusing his music career since the 70s but also his build up of his family. But the downside is that due to the conflict of his homeland, it seems that he’s trying to find the path of peace for his musical career in order to impressing his group and his family. I find the movie version of Bob Marley is rather nice, I know he's the main focus, since again, he’s on his path to find the way to give a peaceful message based on his homeland’s conflict. He’s a band leader with a struggling situation with a mix of the aforementioned and a near death assassination moment that he wants peace and love, which makes him understandable and I think Kingsley did a nice work of his role for his performance and his Jamaican Patois accent, sure his voice may or may not matching from the actual voice of Bob Marley, but still, he did a nice work of his role.

Next up is Rita Marley (played by Lashana Lynch), she’s Bob’s wife and band-mate of the group and part of family, however, she’s also been aware that due to conflict, she’s concern for Bob’s plan for a concert tour to Europe that might’ve separating from him and the homeland if the finding the path of peace isn’t going on the way. I find her another nice movie version of Rita, she’s more of a typical plot warning when it comes to going outside of Jamaica. But, il probably give an appreciation for Lashana’s performance.

Finally, there’s Chris Blackwell (played by James Norton), he’s the record producer of Bob Marley and The Wailers, and quite possibly the one man who gave the revolutionary of reggae genre. In this movie, he wouldn’t be until he was introduced in the 2nd act when he first meets Bob Marley and The Wailers for the record deal following Bob Marley’s success of Exodus. I find him to be passable at best, and Norton did a descent role.

As for the rest of the casts, they’re aren’t much else to say, there’s Tyrone Downie (played by Tosin Cole) who’s the pianist of The Wailers, and Aston Barrett aka Family Man (played by surprisingly, the son Aston Barrett Jr.) who’s the backing member of The Wailers, pretty amazing to having his son playing as his father (like father like son).

The characters in this movie are pretty minimal for their unique development due to the lackluster writing, but at least the casting are good for their performance.

And now for my final opinion of this movie.

Overall, Bob Marley: One Love is a pretty average movie that it just came off as way too simple.

The story and the message is nice, the presentation looks well done and the acting are pretty nice for their performance and their Jamaican Patois accent are nice too.

But the movie felt soo lacking from beginning to end that the movie’s writing is only focusing on the build up rising of reggae genre, the struggling life of Bob Marley and the path of peace, and that’s about it for a 1 hour and 40 minutes. Which is something that I would love to see the early life and the formation band of The Wailers. I get the Marley family are trying for being involved of the projects, but its just the execution could’ve gone better, no offense for the Marley family, since I understand they want to be in a passion project of dramatization of Bob Marley.

I don’t think Il recommend this movie how average it is based on the lackluster writing. But im sure this movie is definitely for the fans of Bob Marley and the fans of reggae to watch, but for me, I thought it will be promising, but then… It felt flat pretty quickly.

For my rating, im gonna give this one a 4.5/10.

So this ends of my movie review, if you guys have your opinion or any suggestions, let me know at comment bellow and support me on KO-FI.com/blackevil.

Thanks for reading, and im Anthony, signing out.

Movie Review: Argylle

 

Hey everyone, my name is Anthony and welcome everyone to my very first Movie Review in the year 2024.

Yes, my friends, im back in duty to do another a yearly modern Movie Review, sure I can do reviews from the past, but you guys already know the drill. Aside skipping over January, the most cursed month ever for revealing ok to mediocre films.

So with all that said, lets start my year off for what if we have a movie about life imitates art, with a man formerly known as Superman?

“Argylle” is a 2024 spy action comedy film that was produced/directed by Matthew Vaughn, written/co-porduced by Jason Fuchs (Ok seriously, who names Fuchs at the end? Honestly??) and co-produced by Adam Bohling and David Reid.

When it comes to Matt Vaughn, he had some fascinating that gave us at the time that I know like Stardust and Kick-Ass. But of course, he’s also give movie the adaptation of Kingsman with some good to mixed results. When it comes to his idea of Argylle, its a tough task what the movie was first developed. According to Vaughn, he wanted to make his own James Bond style movie with Henry Cavill. In fact, Cavill was originally intended to playing as Agent 007 in Casino Royale, but didn’t make it due to his younger age, which sounds like Vaughn wanted if its gonna be worth to show us how it could’ve been a former Superman playing as Bond, or so we thought.

So, with all that said, will it worth of making story with special spy with cute cat, or is it too risky to do the action life imitates the art?

Well, lets find out.

The Story

Now, you think the story would be a unique concept of life imitates the arts for purpose of gun-fu? Well… No.

The movie begins where we’re in a story within a story, where Argylle is in a dance club with a beautiful lady, only to be ambushed by her with terrorist group for escape, only to be caught by Argylle’s partner Wyatt that Argylle and Wyatt went into fancy interrogation to asking the evidence before she killed herself with poison, ended on a cliffhanger. Jumped into real world, we introduced Ella Conway who’s a successful author of Argylle novel series, however, once she’s working in the 5th novel, she’s lost to leaving the project unfinished. But once she’s in the train to visiting her parents, Barry and Ruth, for her unfinished plan (I think), she’s gotten herself being targeted by terrorist organization, but then she was helped by a real spy named Aiden Wylde to taking them down, telling her the way they’re going after is because her novel series are predicting the future (aka real life imitates the arts). Its up to Ella and Aiden to working together as a double spy to stop the terrorist without prediction from the novel.

Now, this may sounds like a cool concept for how the novel predicts the future for pure coincidence, but this one is more focus on action rather than predicting the tragedies (kinda like Titanic, but different story), especially for how the action scenes reminded her from the novel when she saw. But alas, all good things came to at end very quickly, because story of this movie became a convoluted mess how if its either predicting predicting the future or how the inspiration of Argylle came from, which I would like the novel predict to future to fight back to stop the prediction would work, but they completely changing the subject from the 2nd act to giving us a plot twist, and let me tell you, when it comes to the plot twist, this is easily the worst one that it pissed me off so badly that completely loses the subject of the plot what we like to see, but im not gonna give you a full detail, cause you’re definitely never know how between the plot twist and the writing is so bad that its a complete mess from beginning to end, not to mention for 2h long movie, I’ve been begging to stop focusing on the plot twist, get to action and role the credits, its almost like this movie is so slow with cheap twist development with poor humor attempt. But not to mention for the latter, when they’re trying to make a humor, they feel so low-brow that I barely able to make more than a small chuckles, cause most of the jokes are just poorly attempt with cheap culture references or not even trying to be funny.

The idea of the movie would’ve been a good idea, but its just the writing is both badly written for missing the subject, bullcrap plot twist and the jokes are barely trying to be “Funny” from beginning to end.

The Presentation

I think its safe to say that the movie’s presentation with action scenes are definitely the main highlight than the writing itself.

For starter, the locations are surprisingly nice pick like filming in UK with London, England, along with production used studio from Greenford, Park Royal and even Bovingdon. Though they also using both Greece and United States as a filming backgrounds, while the res was filmed somewhere in Europe outside of UK.

As for action scenes, I think they’re easily the ONLY good thing in this movie, they have a nice action moments with fist fights and shooting guns (aka Gun-Fu), but one part that I like is the double vision effect from Ella when she sees Aidan reminded him as her fictional spy Argylle, which some moments from the novel predicted the future. Some action scenes are also have some creative moments that Il give a credit what they’re trying, either crafting gadget or even some unique camera works. However, despite the best effort, sometimes there are couple of times they either using green screen or even CG, which they can be question, or maybe it looks like they forgot to realizing its 2024, not 2014. However, one part that distracted and concern me is why would they put a cat during the action scenes, like I get its nice to show us a creative backpack with a glass for cat’s view, but what was the point to have a cat in action scenes?

While the soundtrack are passable at best, but one pert that boggles me, is the usage of The Beatles “Now and Then”. For those if you don’t know, “Now and Then” is one of The Beatles latest song they ever gave us last year, and its no stranger that this is the last one for good since the song project was left on a dark after The Beatles had a broken down breakup at the end of the 60s, but its a long different story. Anyway, which for some reason, they probably had the audacity to using this song for the purpose for the plot, which not only its just plain stupid, but also exploitative to put in the movie, despite this was The Beatles’ lost project turned reality since Linkin Park’s Lost.

Aside the problems I have, the movie’s presentation looks good and the action scenes are the only good thing about this movie.

The Characters

Despite the movie has a buttload of familiar casts, you think the characters would help to be go-- NO!!!They’re just poorly written and worthless, for the most part…!

Lets start off with Ella Conway (played by Bryce Dallas Howard, aka Gwen Stacy in Spider-Man 3), she’s the author of Argylle series who’s trying finishing her novel, despite she’s gotta be involved with action scenes. This may sounds like a unique idea as I said before, but it was already down hill with plenty of bad writing and bad plot twist about her or even her novel’s origin that she’s either idiot or clearly made us look like idiots (or both?). Im not trying to bashing her, I think she did a nice work of her performance, but its just the way she was written for being either cowardly or an idiot is clearly made her being a worst protagonist.

Next up, we have Aidan Wylde (played by Sam Rockwell, aka Mr. Wolf from The Bad Guys), a real spy who, I think, taking similar footstep from Argylle to protecting her to uncovering who she is. Even though he’s also not helping for a bad writing, but I think he’s an okay character, which begs my question, why can’t the movie focuses on him for being a fanboy turned aspired spy from the novel for the sake of saving the author. I guess you can say that he’s also a good one in the movie, but its too bad the writing didn’t help him very much.

And we have Conway family (if you can call that), Ritter and Ruth (played by Bryan Cranston, aka Walter White, and Catherine O’Hara, aka Kate McCallister from Home Alone), they’re the family in their Division for sabotaging her for for either finish the novel and meet her death from blood. They may sounds like a interesting idea, but again, too bad the writing is poorly done for bunch of clichés like a main villain who’s always watching or threatening his terrorists or Ruth being a caring mother who’s trying to help Ella for doing the right way for the novel, but she’s just there for, again, wasted from a bad writing.

Oh, you’re probably wondering about the titular character Argylle? (played by the former Superman, Henry Cavill) Well, at first, he’s a fictional protagonist that Ella created him. But he’s also into her subconscious what the action scenes reminds her from the novel or even trying to motivating her, which, on paper, would’ve been a secondary protagonist to helping her to help Aidan and motivation. But its too bad he’s pretty much a wasted of space for limited appearance in the movie, again, im aware he was meant to be the new James Bond, and this is what we got? Though I find him did a nice job, but again, too bad he’s completely wasted in the movie since the cringing CG facial on Joss Whedon’s version of Justice League.

As for the rest, like I said, they’re just a wasted opportunity for, you guessed it, high profile appearances for the sake of high profile appearances.

There’s Keira (played by Ariana DeBose) who’s Ella’s late friend, Wyatt (played by John Cena, aka Peacemaker, aka Super Cena in WWE) who’s Argylle’s partner, and Alfie (played by Samuel L. Jackson, aka Nick Fury in Marvel Cinematic Universe) who’s the former CIA deputy and the boss of “Masterkey”.

Because of the bad writing, the characters are clearly making the characters being both worthless and wasting the appearance, but also wasting a good talent with our familiar actors.

And now for my final opinion of this movie

Overall, Argylle was already a bad start to kick off this year, cause this movie is the most broken down mess for both action movie and comedy movie!

Aside of giving us some pretty good presentation, a fun and creative action scenes and one good character, but everything else is mish-mash of mess with bad writing to giving us a weak story, the jokes are barely a “jokes”, a waste appearance of familiar actors, exploitative song for the purpose of the plot and also has the worst plot twists I’ve ever watched.

This movie is just so bad that it pisses me off when I was in theater much like when I watched TTG’s movie, I was supposed to have a hope to be fun, but it failed all over for being a wasted opportunity of action-comedy movie with the levels of stupidities, which like I said, with all the bad twists, I was begging for rolling the credits.

This is the movie that its not worth of your time to watching this dumpster fire. So do yourselves a favor and learn from my mistake as always, don’t even bother to watching this time wasting action-comedy movie, its nowhere fun and it insults our minds from the poorly written twists that it makes M. Night Shyamalan movies look good.

For those reasons, im gonna give this one a 3/10, along with earning the Dumpster Fire of FAILURE.

So this ends of my movie review (Again, already a bad start for 2024), if you guys have your opinion or any suggestions, let me know at comment bellow and support me on KO-FI.com/blackevil.

Thanks for reading, and im Anthony, signing out.