Thurgood Marshall was a legendary lawyer who became the first black judge in the US Supreme Court.Their is a good film to be made about his life, this is not it.Marshall focuses in one attempted murder case that he was involved in back in 1941 when he was a lawyer for the NAACP.It really is a modern version of To Kill a Mockingbird. A black man Joseph Spell is accused of raping a respectable married white woman who employed him. Spell then threw her off a bridge and left her to die.Marshall comes to Connecticut and teams up with a reluctant Jewish insurance lawyer Sam Friedman because the judge would not allow Marshall to be lead counsel.It is an effective courtroom drama, especially as Friedman is an inexperienced criminal lawyer who slowly discovers that there is more to law than insurance litigation.Chadwick Boseman shines as Marshall but there is nothing groundbreaking here as Marshall leads Friedman into the nuances of criminal litigation.

It's 1941. Thurgood Marshall (Chadwick Boseman) travels the country as NAACP's only lawyer crusading for black defendants against the racist justice system. His next case is in Greenwich, Connecticut where rich housewife Eleanor Strubing (Kate Hudson) has accused her driver Joseph Spell (Sterling K. Brown) of raping her. Insurance lawyer Sam Friedman (Josh Gad) is recruited. He's reluctant and on top of that, Judge Foster (James Cromwell) refuses to accept Marshall into the local state bar. With Marshall silenced in court and with no criminal court experience, Friedman has to battle entitled prosecutor Loren Willis (Dan Stevens).This is a biodrama of one particular case with future Supreme Court judge Marshall. The story is compelling and the history is fascinating. The actors are all first rate. The actual court case does have some awkward turns. It's a thin line between blaming the victim and searching for the truth. It may help to definitively declare Spell as innocent from the start. This shouldn't be a courtroom mystery and should skew more towards underdog courtroom drama. If Marshall gets the truth from Spell at the beginning, he would come out looking even better. There are a lot of twisting that reminds me too much of a TV courtroom drama. I do love a lot of this movie but little things keep bugging me. For example, I love the kitchen knife joke but their kiss after temple strikes me as too much. I prefer a knowing touch and a sweet smile for her husband to drive home that scene much better. None of the little issues prevent me from really enjoying this well-acted compelling historical drama.

This film tells the story of a African American lawyer, who fights against social Injustice by helping people who are charged with crimes because of their skin color."Marshall" tells a compelling story of the fight for the right and just. The story is gripping because it is not an easy fight. Indeed, the African American characters evoke much sympathy and really connects with the viewers. I enjoyed it a lot.

I can give this movie nothing more than a 5 out of 10. Marshall is a fairly average movie all around. I was expecting a serious toned well made movie telling me something about a future Supreme Court Justice. Instead, I got a lackluster average courtroom drama. The acting is average and the characters are almost cartoon-ish. Had this movie been made in the early 1990's I may have been able to give it a 6, because that is what it feels like. A tired early 1990's courtroom drama. To see people rating this movie a 8, or 9 destroys my faith in humanity as a whole, this was not a great, spectacular movie that will make you think, it's a lazy boring sunday, "because there is nothing on," movie. It isn't awful just dated. With this being Thurgood Marshall, I was expecting something much more. I was expecting to see something better along the lines of great movies like "A Time to Kill," or something like that. This fell flat by a margin I seriously could not imagine. The dialog is pretty much a caricature that probably was written over the course of a weekend. It's a waste of a good story that could have been great had the film makers taken their time to make it so. As it is, this was likely just greenlighted because of the Marshall name, figuring they could squeeze a few bucks out to make some other flat movie in the future. Again, a 5 out of 10. Not a horrible movie, just average in so many ways that it fails to even live up to the ratings people have so far given it. I don't know if they are just biased in favor of the great man portrayed, but the movie itself is not the 7.1 out of 10 people are giving it at the time of this review.