This slickly average 1940s courtroom drama is the story of Thurgood Marshall, attorney for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and future first African American supreme court justice. Boomerang’s Reginald Hudlin presents Marshall (Chadwick Boseman) in smooth-talking fashion, buddying him up with Caucasian co-counsel Sam Friedman (Josh Gad) to defend a black man accused of raping a white woman. The courtroom scenes are pretty paint-by-the-numbers; things feel less sterile when the action moves into smoky jazz clubs and on to rain-slicked streets. The most interesting question is, can Boseman (soon to be seen in Marvel’s Black Panther) carry a film? While he doesn’t quite match the smoulder of Denzel Washington’s Easy Rawlins in 1995 period noir Devil in a Blue Dress, his performance is suitably charismatic, the straight-backed straight man to buoyant Jewish sidekick and comic foil Gad.
