The story of how reggae icon Bob Marley overcame adversity, and the journey behind his revolutionary music.

Bob Marley lived a short life, but a memorable one, with his songs and political activism standing the test of time despite his sad death from cancer at 36. ‘One Love’, Reinaldo Marcus Green’s biopic, is an attempt to tell his story and to get underneath the skin of a man responsible for a lot of great music, but it hews too closely to the standard musical biopic format and fails to do justice to the man at its centre.

The film begins in 1976 as Marley is preparing to play a peace concert in Jamaica, with the aim of cooling down tensions between rival political and criminal factions. His plans are interrupted by a group who attempt to kill him, his wife and his fellow band members, however he still plays the show and it grows his reputation further at home and abroad, both musically and as a political figure. The remainder of the movie follows the rest of Marley’s life as he tours through Europe, records his seminal album ‘Exodus’ and discovers he has the cancer that will eventually kill him. It skirts over some of the more challenging aspects of his personal life, as is the director’s right, but it does mean this is an incomplete picture that feels more hagiography than robust exploration of a complex characters life.

‘One Love’ has great music and a compelling lead performance from Kingsley Ben-Adir as Bob Marley, with Lashana Lynch doing her best as his underwritten wife, but it is a curiously undercooked biopic that never really takes off and doesn’t provide a figure as large as Marley with a movie as good as he deserved.

Rating: 3/5

Directed By: Reinaldo Marcus Green

Starring: Kingsley Ben-Adir, Lashana Lynch, James Norton, Tosin Cole, Aston Barrett Jr., Anthony Welsh, Sevana, Hector Lewis, Michael Gandolfini and Nadine Marshall

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt8521778/