See Chadwick Boseman in one of his finest roles

The late actor showed he was a master of his craft in courtroom drama ‘Marshall’.

‘Marshall’. Source: Marshall Film/Open Road Films

Chadwick Boseman was propelled into the Hollywood stratosphere in 2018 following his portrayal of superhero T’Challa in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s box-office and critical success Black Panther. But it was Boseman’s performance a year earlier as a real-life superhero in Marshall that cemented his position as the actor’s actor.

In the English-language movie, coming to NITV, he plays crusading lawyer and civil rights activist Thurgood Marshall, who spent his life travelling throughout the USA and fighting against racial injustice.

Boseman – who passed away last year at age 43 from colon cancer – had a penchant for playing powerful men on the silver screen, from Black baseball pioneer Jackie Robinson in 42 (2013) and troubled soul singer James Brown in Get On Up (2014), but perhaps none stronger than Marshall, who would go on to be the first Black American Supreme Court Justice in 1967.

“He was the one Black lawyer in [America] in the modern pre-Civil Rights era who always had the big picture in mind,” Marshall’s biographer Will Haygood tells Smithsonian Magazine
. “He would file voting rights cases, employment rights cases, criminal justice cases, housing discrimination cases, and all of these victories became the blueprint for the 1964 Civil Rights Bill and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.”

Marshall, Chadwick Boseman, Sterling K. Brown

Sterling K. Brown as Joseph Spell in ‘Marshall’. Source: Marshall Film/Open Road Films

Instead of focusing on better known cases – such as 1954’s landmark Supreme Court case of Brown v Board Of Education that effectively outlawed segregation in public schools – the film looks at one of Marshall’s more obscure criminal cases from 1941.

Director Reginald Hudlin explains to

RogerEbert.com

that it’s “a case you don’t know, with an outcome you don’t know, with all the lower tabloid TMZ-esque qualities. It’s going back in time but maybe with more contemporary themes.”

As a lawyer for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Marshall travels from New York City to Bridgeport, Connecticut to defend Black chauffeur Joseph Spell (Sterling K. Brown), accused of the rape and attempted murder of his white boss’s wife, Eleanor Strubing (Kate Hudson).

The crime has received massive publicity in the newspapers, stirring up plenty of racial hatred in the community. It’s seen by the NAACP as a must-win case as a defeat could see the organisation lose valuable donors.

Being white and local, unassuming insurance lawyer Sam Friedman (Josh Gad) is roped in to get Marshall admitted to the bar before the trial begins. However, things go badly at the initial hearing. Judge Carl Foster (James Cromwell) – who is friends with the prosecutor Lorin Willis (Dan Stevens) – admits the out-of-stater but refuses to let him speak during the trial.

Chadwick Boseman as Thurgood Marshall and Josh Gad as Sam Friedman in ‘Marshall’. Source: Marshall Film/Open Road Films

The reluctant Friedman, with no criminal law background, is appointed the new lead counsel with the far more experienced Marshall forced to advise him in near-silence via notes, hurried whispers and facial gestures.

As Boseman elaborated in an interview with

EW.com

, “[Marshall] is gagged. It’s like being a boxer, having one hand tied around your back. To quarterback this thing with another lawyer who’s inexperienced was really interesting to me.”

It turns into an unlikely buddy film. The duo chip away at the prosecution’s case while facing seemingly insurmountable odds: what appears at first to be overwhelming evidence against their client, trying to convince an all-white jury of his innocence, the systemic bigotry Marshall and the Jewish Friedman face in the courtroom and the sometimes violent hostility outside it, and the fact their client has a dodgy past and may not be telling them the truth either.

They also have to contend with the general public’s ugly belief that Spell must have committed this terrible crime simply because of his skin colour. A guilty verdict seems inevitable to just about everyone in Bridgeport except Spell’s lawyers.

Chadwick Boseman is ‘Marshall’. Source: Marshall Film/Open Road Films

Near the end of the trial, Marshall tells Friedman an anecdote about how he lost a testicle in an accident many years earlier while fleeing in a truck from a gang of bigots. With a disarming smile, he concludes, “Even sitting in the back of that pick-up with my scrotum torn, every bump sending shocks of pain down my leg, even that wasn’t as excruciating as sitting there watching you argue this case these past few weeks.”

It’s a playful jab – by now, the insurance lawyer has earned Marshall’s respect. Gad is excellent as Friedman, a well-respected member of his community torn between walking away from representing Spell or staying – and possibly ruining his career – because it’s the right thing to do. It’s nice to learn in the movie’s end credits that Friedman continued to be an advocate for civil rights in Connecticut after the case ended.

Marshall is tense, riveting viewing and Boseman’s performance as the confident – one could even call him arrogant – lawyer was worthy of an Oscar nomination. Which he didn’t receive… although the film did get one nomination for Best Original Song. He would have to wait till the 2021 Academy Awards to receive a posthumous nomination for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.

Marshall may be set 80 years ago, but the issues of racism and the right to a fair trial are as relevant today as they were in 1941 America.