Posters for Just Mercy are emblazoned with quotes justifiably extolling the filmвЂ™s вЂњOscar-worthyвЂќ performances, and itвЂ™s easy to see its absence from the recent nominations as further evidence that #OscarsSoWhite still applies, a feeling amplified by the similarly depressing lack of recognition for stand-out 2019 turns from the likes of Lupita NyongвЂ™o, Jennifer Lopez, Awkwafina, Song Kang-ho et al. Yet as co-founder of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), Stevenson is determined to make a difference, and despite his would-be clientвЂ™s initial dismissals, he makes the journey out to McMillianвЂ™s impoverished old neighbourhood to meet the friends and family who know he couldnвЂ™t have done it.

By the time the Harvard-educated Stevenson (Michael B Jordan) starts defending death row inmates, McMillian вЂ“ aka Johnny D вЂ“ is awaiting execution with little hope of reprieve and even less faith in lawyers. Billboards boast about Monroeville being Harper LeeвЂ™s hometown (вЂњCheck out the Mockingbird museum,вЂќ says Rafe SpallвЂ™s district attorney, вЂњitвЂ™s one of the great civil rights landmarks of the southвЂќ), but the spirit of Atticus Finch does not appear to haunt these halls of justice. We open in 1987, in Monroe County, Alabama, where pulpwood tree feller McMillian (an almost unrecognisably unimposing Jamie Foxx) is arrested for the murder of white teenager Ronda Morrison. Yet as the intelligently accessible script by Cretton and Andrew Lanham makes clear, McMillianвЂ™s case is not the whole picture rather, it is a totemic example of how a socioeconomic system forged within the furnace of slavery still bears the shackles of its past.

As with the book, the film frames its wider story of poverty, prejudice and institutional racism within an infamous miscarriage of justice вЂ“ the case of Walter McMillian, an African American condemned to death for a crime that he evidently did not commit.

Largely eschewing dramatic speechifying in favour of quieter contextualisation, it offers a movingly matter-of-fact account of one manвЂ™s struggle to lend voice to the silenced, dispossessed inmates of death row. A dapted from activist lawyer Bryan StevensonвЂ™s 2014 memoir, subtitled вЂњA Story of Justice and RedemptionвЂќ, Destin Daniel CrettonвЂ™s timely legal drama is, for the most part, as admirably understated as its subject.

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