Biopics don’t get more authorised or anaesthetised than this ploddingly solemn account of reggae legend Bob Marley. A great, or good, movie could have been made about Marley’s sensational career, his musical genius, inspirational asceticism (if not quite humility) and poignant sacrificial destiny as someone who drove himself unsparingly through illness to create a free concert for peace and unity in Jamaica in 1978.
But this is a reverent Hallmark Channel-type film made with the family’s cooperation – there’s hardly a relative here without an associate producer credit – and of course it has all the musical rights. The hits are duly served up and that’s always good news. There are also some moments when, without piety, the film bounces into life: it’s great stuff when the young Wailers (Marley, Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer et al) crowd into a chaotic studio in Kingston in 1963 and launch with unselfconscious inspiration into Simmer Down, a call to renounce violence that Marley developed throughout his life. But really this film is unrelaxed and sanctified.
