“Bob Marley: One Love” (2024) is a family authorized biopic about Jamaican reggae musical artist Bob Marley (Kingsley Ben-Adir) when he goes on a literal and emotional roundtrip. His homeland is fraught with violence because of two warring political parties so he participates in the December 8th, 1976 “Smile Jamaica” concert but is shaken after an assassination attempt. He reacts with a self-imposed exile starting in the United Kingdom where he records “Exodus” then goes on a successful European continental promotional world tour with his band, which includes his wife Rita (Lashana Lynch). As a devout Rastafarian, he is supposed to stay out of “Babylon,” the corrupt, capitalist, colonial, political world, so it is unsurprising that the longer that he stays away from Jamaica, Marley begins to lose touch with his peaceful, nonmaterialistic side, is showing physical and psychological signs of strain and is struggling as God’s messenger through his music and fame. When he returns to Jamaica for the “One Love Peace” concert on April 22, 1978, will he find the peace that he wants to give others?
Terence Winter, who wrote “The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013) and usually helms prestige television series, and Frank E. Flowers, a Caribbean-Cayman Islands-filmmaker, conceived of the story. The red flag is neither are Jamaican or Rastafarian. It is as if someone from another galaxy wanted to make a movie about John the Baptist. You kind of had to be here to soak up the Jesus vibes and understand Christianity to get it right regardless of how well-intentioned and admiring the storyteller is. The story is torn between being a traditional biopic that leans heavily on the needle drops while simultaneously trying to be a Jesus flick for Rastafarians with Marley as the prophet of God tempted to stray from the path of righteousness. Marley’s son, Ziggy, and Rita, produced “Bob Marley: One Love”, and approved cowriters Winter, Flowers, Zach Baylin, who wrote “King Richard” (2021), “Creed III” (2015), and “Gran Turismo” (2023), and cowriter/director Reinaldo Marcus Green even though the story shows their loved one’s low points and conflicts. The nadir adds to Marley’s mystique when he transcends earthly concerns. There is a Last Supper, trials of the cross vibe to the entire movie as opposed to the usual beats of fame, drugs, downfall. His band acts like the disciples and are not individuated except for Rita. There is even a Judas figure in the form of manager Don Taylor (Anthony Walsh), who got shot 6 times during the assassination attempt. Marley moves through the crowd at his compound casually granting miracles in the form of permission to open a shop or having kids surround him. All those running and soccer montages make sense if you recollect that Jesus movies often have huge swaths of the film devoted to Jesus and the disciples walking. It feels random in a music biopic but makes sense in a religious film.
To convey the mystical aspects of the narrative, this film needed a director deft at conveying religious ecstasy and catharsis as Luca Guadagnino did in “Suspiria” (2018). No one needed to understand the faith of the Three Mothers to feel the surreal hope that the characters felt upon the second coming of Mother Suspiriorium, and that kind of artistry was needed to do the same for Rastafarianism and Haile Selassie I, the Ethiopian Emperor whom some saw as the second coming of Jesus. Unfortunately Green is not strong at magical realism, which he tried to do in “Joe Bell” (2020) with mixed results. Green is more at home with directing more conventional concepts as he did in “Monsters and Men” (2018) and “King Richard.” Green depicts Marley on the concert stage seeing something other than what is before him prior to performing. It is difficult to ascertain whether they are memories or visions until the denouement, which is necessary to build to the concluding crescendo.
“Bob Marley: One Love” is like a lot of pre-Covid television series where it toggles back and forth from the present to the past, but the past flashbacks did not really add much to the story except one hilarious moment in the recording studio, which was the funniest moment in the film, and it was because of the supporting actors. It invokes the tragic mulatto trope and provides background on how Bob and Rita got together, but not much insight on how she remained his primary partner while other women were waiting in in plain sight. The strength of Lynch’s performance, who plays Rita in the present, makes it credible and made me wish that I was watching a biopic about Rita, a woman that I knew nothing about before this movie. Lynch needs to star in a movie. These flashbacks feel like filler but are supposed to be building up to this enlightening vision that helps Marley rise above his human frailties but may just leave a lot of viewers with little to no knowledge of Rastafarianism wondering what is going on. Green does deserve credit for depicting marijuana smoking as a communal, religious act and correctly avoids the prevalent images of pot smoking to get high.
If “Bob Marley: One Love” is a watchable movie, it is thanks to the music, strength of the actors’ performances, and Green’s ability to capture the turbulent period. Marley’s music is not what you are skipping on your playlist so why not sit in a dark theater and listen to it while watching majestic vistas of the beautiful Caribbean Island. Sometimes people go to the movies for a screensaver and music to be transported from anywhere else in their lives, and if you can turn off your critical thinking, this movie could do that for you. Also “Luke Cage” had to be a great show to make people sit through dreadful accents, and this cast would have dog walked Marvel’s dialogue coaches. I do not have a Jamaican background, but Jamaican adjacent—friends and family members who married into the family, and this cast nailed the accent, the dialogue, the vibe. It was nice to get that experience on the big screen.
There is also a scene where Marley and his mates check out the punk rock scene while he is visiting the United Kingdom. It is Green and Ben-Adir’s strongest scene where all these Brits are trying so hard to be rebellious, but just by existing, Marley is the inherent threat to the punk rockers and cops, not because he is violent in that moment. He is peaceful and just observing, but his revolt is existing without trying, his Blackness, his foreignness, his dreadlocked hair doing naturally what they use tons of dye/product and put in effort to get a shred of difference without the innate authenticity. That scene dovetails nicely with the tenderness with which Rita washes Marley’s hair. It reflects how Marley was a Rorschach test that some people failed.
“Bob Marley: One Love” is not the definitive film about Marley. It avoided being a complete shallow disaster by relying on Ben-Adir with Lenny Kravitz looks and Bob Marley music, but it tried to introduce some complex themes with mixed results. There is a ton of room for improvement, and it would be nice if someone with more understanding of Rastafarianism could get the funding to make a commercial hit that saw Marley for who he was: a religious leader who used music as his pulpit.