Bob Marley: One Love (2024) Movie Review: A Disinterested Biopic with a Myopic View of its Subject

Bob Marley: One Love (2024) Movie Review: The first time I came across the name Bob Marley was in “I Am Legend” (2008) when Neville (played by Will Smith) informs Anna (played by Alice Braga) of the man and his ideological legacy. The ideological legacy greatly influences Neville’s purpose in a post-apocalyptic world and how he sees his actions in the attempt to cure the world. Not knowing who Bob was back then, I was greatly fascinated by a man whose legacy informed characters in the fictional realm.

Coming to the present times, the trailer for “Bob Marley: One Love” (2024) left me quite enthusiastic about the prospect of not only watching a version of the man but discovering how he used his music as a vehicle for his message; a message essentially of love and unity of the world against forms of oppression. Bob weaponized his music to eliminate the perceived differences between races and celebrate African independence from European domination.

Unlike most artists who either keep their ideological/spiritual positions a part of their personal lives or separate from the art they create for the audience, Bob relegated music to the cause. He made his passion an instrument for his movement, his revolution. He was a man who could not be captured in words and whose essence was only found in the words he sang himself. Then what can be expected from a film on the man? Information, melody, or inspiration? In a sad state of affairs, “Bob Marley: One Love” fails to deliver its promise on all accounts.

A great film leaves you a changed person. And a good film leaves you happy and content for the investment of your time. A bad film, on the other hand, leaves you with lessons. However, it is the mediocrity that is most infuriating. A film is mediocre to me when it fails to contribute anything to the life one is living without faulting on technique, grammar, or intentions. Biographical cinema is infamous for mediocrity.

American filmmakers learned that the audience is largely voyeuristic and derives pleasure from exploring the lives of others. Hence, it invented a filmmaking framework: the selection of a struggle that seems value-neutral in appeal and universal in prevalence, eroding the struggle of its political undertones so that it can allow the audience room to self-victimize for greater acceptance among them, selection of a subject who has experienced the struggle chosen before, dramatizing a set of key milestones of their life, exposing a couple of personal conflicts and finally, a culmination of all the efforts into an event that can be rendered a spectacle.

The framework is used as a gold standard, which is why biographical dramas have a dismal history of experimentation. Life, after all, may be complex, but its expression must be simple. But it has to be ensured that the simplicity doesn’t hollow the expression of life from the inside. “Bob Marley: One Love” is a film that revolves around a life while lacking a life of its own.

My biggest gripe would be that despite being a film about a musician, the film falls short in music. Montages serve to debrief the audience on the events the filmmakers don’t find significant to cover or expand on. The narrative tone feels like I am watching its preview/trailer with its ill-earned high moments that dissipate as soon as they are built up. For example, Bob Marley’s European tour made him emerge among the white audience, and there was a potential to create this montage on the backdrop of a single performance. However, the performance doesn’t extend beyond the intro, and the jump cuts set in.

This phenomenon gets repeated with such a high frequency throughout the film that you completely fail to connect with any sequence. “Bob Marley: One Love” renders its audience passive, wherein we are listening and watching, but our disbelief is not suspended. Wherein we are not connected to the story despite understanding its criticality or agreeing with its messages.

To aggravate the banality of the experience, the film runs three timelines simultaneously in a non-linear edit. While it aims to explore the beginnings of Bob Marley, it only ends up achieving incoherence. The motifs remain perplexing and in the lack of a crescendo in either the climax or the pre-climax, the three different phases of the man’s life appear to be portraying three different individuals who don’t converge in character.

Since the film’s main narrative revolves around the peace concert Bob Marley announced and finally held, the audience deserves to know everything that took place in the concert. The audience didn’t deserve to know it in text but in images that mimic the past. But perhaps the handful of such remarkable moments from history from the life of Bob Marley do not feature at all in the film.

Given where it is due, Kingsley Ben-Adir carries the weight of the film on his shoulders with his performance that often pulls you to the screen. However, the performance cannot be the reason why one must watch this film.

This review was first published during the movie’s theatrical release. Bob Marley: One Love is now available on Premium Video on Demand services.

Bob Marley: One Love (2024) Movie Links: IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Wikipedia, Letterboxd
Bob Marley: One Love (2024) Movie Cast: Kingsley Ben-Adir, Lashana Lynch, James Norton
Bob Marley: One Love (2024) Movie Genre: Biography/Drama, Runtime: 1h 44m

Where to watch Bob Marley: One Love