Even by the frequently low standards of the musician biopic genre, the box-ticking Bob Marley: One Love, directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green (King Richard), seems a particularly uninspired and deferential plod around the life and legacy of the Jamaican reggae star.
The picture covers a period that spans from 1976, when political unrest in Jamaica boiled over and Marley narrowly survived an attempt on his life, through his time based in punk-era London where he recorded the seminal album Exodus, to his return to Jamaica in 1978 for the One Love peace concert. Cursory flashbacks – almost subliminal snippets of childhood trauma; more substantial glimpses of Marley as a young musician – disrupt the flow of the film and feel too formulaic to add much to our understanding of the man he became.
