Most Death Row Movies Are White-Savior Flicks in Disguise — Not These
‘Just Mercy’ and ‘Clemency,’ both out this week, right some serious wrongs in the prison-drama genre
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When civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan) walks into an Alabama prison in the new film Just Mercy, his law degree matters less to the guards than his Blackness; first comes an unnecessary strip search, then the demand that the civil rights lawyer “bend over and cough.” Many movies might linger on the violation that would undoubtedly come next, using the episode as a motivation for Stevenson’s crusade in the biopic. Not this one: Stevenson shoots the guard a you’ve-gone-too-far glare that makes clear to everyone in the theater that this isn’t that kind of prison flick.
It’s one of the many ways that Just Mercy — as well as Clemency, starring Alfre Woodard as a slowly unraveling prison warden — is reversing a troubling trend. Over the last 25 years, death row dramas have singularly focused on the stories of White male leads and their advocates. But Just Mercy and Clemency, both out this week, present moving depictions of real-life death-penalty cases with incarcerated Black men and…
