Just Mercy (4K UHD Review)
- Review Date: Sep 04, 2024
- Format: 4K Ultra HD
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Director
Destin Daniel CrettonRelease Date(s)
2019 (August 13, 2024)Studio(s)
Warner Bros. Pictures (Warner Home Video)- Film/Program Grade: B+
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: A-
- Extras Grade: C-
Review
“But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice.”
– William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act IV, Scene I
In this familiar conception of justice, mercy is something granted to those who really deserve the right hand of justice. Of course, from a practical standpoint, Portia’s speech to Shylock in Act IV is little more than a Hail Mary, a last-ditch attempt to save Antonio’s hide by flattering the recalcitrant moneylender in order to get him to back down from his cruel but perfectly valid case. (With Shakespeare, irony is layered on top of irony, and nothing can ever be taken at face value.) Still, the sentiment is a superficially noble one, and it accords with the common conception of mercy as being an adjunct to true justice. Yet when attorney Brian Stevenson chose the title Just Mercy for a memoir about his work in establishing the Equal Justice Initiative, he deliberately concatenated the two sides of the coin into a single term that reflected the fact that mercy and justice aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.
Stevenson founded the Equal Justice Initiative in 1989, a few years after graduating with a law degree from Harvard. Its core mission has always been to protect basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society. One of the first major cases that the EJI took on involved Walter “Johnnie D.” McMillian, a black man who had been convicted and sentenced to death for murdering a white woman in Monroeville, Alabama. There was no physical evidence connecting him to the crime, just supposed eyewitness testimony from a convicted felon, and the prosecution never established a motive in the case. Yet a mostly white jury convicted him anyway, and while they recommended a life sentence, the judge overruled them to impose the death penalty instead. Finally, after six years on death row, Stevenson successfully had all charges against McMillian dropped, and the innocent man was set free to return to his family.
Just Mercy was published in 2014, and while it examines the history of the Equal Justice Initiative and many of the cases Stevenson has handled, it naturally focuses on McMillian. So, when the story was brought to the screen in 2019, it was inevitable that the film would center around McMillian’s story as well. Michael B. Jordon was brought on board to play Stevenson, while Jamie Foxx took on the role of McMillian. The supporting cast includes Brie Larson as Stevenson’s associate Eva Ansley; Tim Blake Nelson as the dubious eyewitness Ralph Myers; Rafe Spall as the district attorney Tommy Chapman; Michael Harding as Sheriff Tate, who has a vested interest in keeping McMillian imprisoned; and Rob Morgan and O’Shea Jackson, Jr. as two other death row inmates who Stevenson also tried to assist. Yet as good as this supporting cast may be, Just Mercy stands or falls based on the quality of the lead performances by Jordan and Foxx. Needless to say, they were both more than up to the task.
Co-writer/director Destin Daniel Cretton took a fairly low-key approach to the potentially explosive subject matter, letting most of the film play out in semi-documentary fashion using handheld camerawork that follows the action rather than leading it. That’s decidedly different than the approach that Stevenson used in his memoir, where he took advantage of the first-person perspective to freely editorialize as necessary. Yet Just Mercy does work better as a film by letting the events mostly speak for themselves. Still, there are a few points where Cretton felt the need to gild the lily by straying from what really happened in order to dramatize events, like staging a scene where the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals denies the petition for a new trial. In reality, they just faxed the decision to the EJI office. Cretton also significantly altered a moment where the local police stop Stevenson, making it look like an attempt to intimidate him over continuing to work on the case. Stevenson was actually accosted by the police before he ever took the case, in what turned out to be a garden-variety instance of racial profiling. Making it look like an intimidation tactic inadvertently takes something away from the horrifying reality of how commonplace and ordinary that racial profiling can be.
Yet if those are flaws in the cinematic adaptation of Just Mercy, they’re minor ones, and Stevenson’s intended message still rings out loud and clear. Regardless of how you may feel about the death penalty in general, Just Mercy highlight a fundamental flaw in the American justice system where the death penalty is concerned. Not just the clear disparity in sentencing, where disadvantaged groups like the underprivileged and racial minorities pay the ultimate price at a disproportionate rate (and yes, that’s not just relative to the population as a whole, but also relative to the subset of those convicted of capital crimes). The fact that disadvantaged people receive unequal treatment before the law is a core concern of the Equal Justice Initiative, and it’s a core theme of Just Mercy as well. It’s a shameful aspect of the justice system as a whole. In terms of the death penalty, however, there’s a far more insidious flaw that ends up inadvertently trapping disadvantaged groups in its wake: letting the desire for vengeance override the need for true justice.
Justice may not actually be blind, but it does turn a blind eye to proof of innocence once a conviction has been obtained. The hunger to enact an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth is so strong that it sometimes overrides the workings of the entire system. As long as someone is going to pay the penalty, anyone, it doesn’t always seem to matter if it’s the right person. That’s readily apparent at all levels of the system, from local prosecutors and district attorneys who fight tooth and nail against the introduction of new evidence like DNA testing, all the way up to the Supreme Court of the United States, which willingly blocks appeals based on trivial technicalities regardless of the strength of the case against the original conviction. That’s not just absurd; it’s abhorrent. When it comes to the American legal system, substitutionary atonement just isn’t good enough.
A justice system that willingly condemns someone to death based on eyewitness testimony from a convicted felon, with no corroborating physical evidence to support that testimony, is no system of justice. A justice system that leaves someone to rot on death row until the appeals process has been exhausted, even when there’s strong evidence that the original conviction was in error, is no system of justice. A justice system that puts someone to death while there’s even the tiniest trace of reasonable doubt about their guilt is no system of justice. The quality of mercy that droppeth as a gentle rain from heaven isn’t just strained in instances like these; it’s broken beyond repair. Wanting to ensure that the innocent people aren’t unfairly penalized under the American legal system isn’t even really mercy in the first place, just or otherwise.
It’s just common goddamned sense.
Cinematographer Brett Pawlak captured Just Mercy digitally in Redcode RAW format at 8K resolution using Panavision Millennium DXL2 cameras with Panavision Primo Artiste and H-series lenses. Postproduction work was completed as a 4K Digital Intermediate, framed at 1.85:1 for its theatrical release. This version has been graded for High Dynamic Range in HDR10 only. Thanks to the 8K origination and a moderately healthy encode, the textures are beautifully resolved all throughout Just Mercy—hair, clothing, and even the most minute of facial details are all sharp as a tack. There’s a light layer of artificial grain throughout, but not enough that it proves detrimental to the fine detail in the underlying image. Pawlak’s restrained color palette favors browns, tans, and other earth tones, so it’s not necessarily a film that cries out for Wide Color Gamut, but the 10-bit color depth of HDR means that the gradations are subtle enough that there’s no issues with artifacts like banding. The contrast range is definitely improved compared to Blu-ray, however, with deeper blacks that don’t lose any detail. A few of the nighttime shots still exhibit shallower contrast, but that’s simply how they were captured. It’s a beautiful 4K master and a modest but significant improvement over Blu-ray.
Audio is offered in English Dolby Atmos, with optional English subtitles. It’s the same track that was available on Blu-ray, minus the alternative languages and English Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks. It’s a subtle mix that doesn’t call attention to itself while still making use of the immersive capabilities of object-based audio. Ambient effects like the sounds of wildlife and the noises of the prison are used to draw the viewers into the environments of the film, but not in a way that diverts attention from what’s happening front and center. The music really benefits from the lossless Atmos mix, from the score by Joel P. West to the variety of songs that appear on the soundtrack. Listen in particular for Alan Lomax’s 1960 stereo recording of Bessie Jones and the Georgia Sea Island Singers performing I’m Gonna Lay Down My Life for My Lord, which plays over the closing credits. The backing vocals have been pulled forward into the mix, making it sound like the viewer is sitting in the middle of the room where they were recorded. It’s simply breathtaking.
The Warner Bros. 4K Ultra HD release of Just Mercy is 4K UHD at its barest minimum—there’s no Blu-ray, no Digital Code, and not even a slipcover. The following extras are included, all of them in HD:
- Making Mercy (4:08)
- The Equal Justice Initiative (8:11)
- This Moment Deserves (6:09)
- Deleted Scenes:
- Bryan Debates with Harvard Classmate (2:20)
- Bryan Meets Charlie (4:49)
- Charlie Is Released (1:17)
- Bryan Tells Walter That He Plays the Piano (:50)
- Bryan and Tommy Meet the Judge (1:32)
- Minnie Suffers Alone (:18)
- Bryan Shows Compassion to Jeremy (1:39)
- Uncle Leo Encourages Bryan (1:45)
The extras are all ported over from 2020 Blu-ray release of Just Mercy, and they’re also pretty bare minimum, but there’s still more here than may meet the eye. Yes, most of them are little more than EPK style featurettes, but they still manage to do things a little differently. That’s most apparent in Making Mercy, which isn’t really a making-of featurette at all, but rather a tribute to the diverse cast and crew who brought the film to life. Interviews with cast and crew members are commonplace, but in this case, they dove down to smallest level by including a wide variety of assistants and even interns. The Equal Justice Initiative is introduced by Michael B. Jordan, but the rest of it features Bryan Stevenson exploring the broader mission of the EJI and offering a few thoughts about the film. This Moment Deserves focuses on the need for equal justice and mercy as portrayed in the film, and includes interviews with Stevenson, Destin Daniel Cretton, Jordan, Brie Larson, Jamie Foxx, production designer Sharon Seymour, and costume designer Francine Jamison-Tanchuck.
The Deleted Scenes are interesting because while they all appear to have been cut for valid reasons, they still illuminate the story and the characters, so they’re well worth a look. There’s an entire subplot involving one more case that Stevenson took on during that period, which was eliminated to keep the focus on McMillian. Yet it’s still pretty potent stuff. There’s also another wrinkle to the fictionalized subplot involving the prison guard who has a change of heart over the course of the film. Unfortunately, there’s no “Play All” option, but it’s worth taking the time to dig through all of these lost moments one by one—after having watched the film itself, of course.
While it’s lovely that Warner Bros. has finally released Just Mercy on UHD, the fact that they’ve added nothing new to the mix, and even subtracted a few minor things like the different language options, only serves to highlight the fact that they should have just released it on UHD the first time back in 2020. Nothing has been gained by waiting four years to see the film in its best possible light. And yet Just Mercy in 4K really is seeing the film in its best possible light, so right or wrong, it’s great that Warner Bros. finally pulled the trigger. Given the behind-the-scenes chaos at the studio these days, sometimes you just have to take what you get from them.
- Stephen Bjork
(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, and Letterboxd).