Splatter: on FILM

Tales of Thurgood Marshall don’t do his courage and swagger justice quite like Chadwick Boseman’s performance.

Sterling K. Brown (of This is Us) also stepped up to the big screen plate with expertise I hope to witness more often.

Josh Gad , often the funny man, centers and performs as the story goes from same-old courtroom to Atticus Finch-esque exposition.

Perhaps it is exposition that is this film’s fatal flaw. All talk, no action. Elvis sang a song to that effect, and we should have listened and offered a little less conversation a little more action.

It does its job, at least, of setting up the despicable former treatment of people of color in the south. Thurgood isn’t the all-good too pure and perfect hero of the film, but he’s human, relatable, delightful on every screen he graces, sauntering in with confidence to win cases Atticus never would have dreamed of winning.