Marshall
Open Road Films (II) | Release Date: October 13, 2017 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
66
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 34 Critic Reviews
Positive:
24
Mixed:
10
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
88
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonOct 12, 2017
One of the freshest and most entertaining films of the year. Read full review
88
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldOct 11, 2017
Marshall is a handsome, old-fashioned film about a real-life hero, with a message of equality and justice that always bears repeating. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzOct 11, 2017
It pays attention to issues of racial, religious and gender discrimination without wavering from its main objective: giving us an entertaining film about a couple of guys who are in way over their heads. Read full review
80
The New YorkerRichard BrodyOct 11, 2017
Reginald Hudlin directs this historical drama, set in 1941, with an apt blend of vigor and empathy. Read full review
80
VarietyPeter DebrugeOct 4, 2017
By approaching Marshall as an idealistic young trial lawyer, the film stands on its own as a compelling courtroom drama, complete with surprising revelations — and while we hope things will go his way, this case could just as easily prove the one that motivated his future crusade. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperOct 16, 2017
You won’t find much subtlety in the solid period-piece drama Marshall, but you will find plenty of crowd-pleasing courtroom theatrics, some wonderful performances from the main players — and yes, all sorts of reminders of how far we’ve come in terms of race relations since the early 1940s, and how very, very far we still have to go. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliOct 14, 2017
By limiting the film’s time frame, the narrative is allowed to breathe and, as a result, we get a distinct snapshot not only of the main character but of the setting that resulted in his becoming historically important. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyDevan CogganOct 14, 2017
The film shines, however, as a taut courtroom drama. Read full review
75
Philadelphia Daily NewsGary ThompsonOct 12, 2017
Marshall overcomes some early stiffness and flat-footed storytelling and evolves into an engaging courtroom drama, where witness-stand theatrics and Perry Mason flourishes give the movie needed narrative momentum. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsOct 12, 2017
A workmanlike but vividly acted courtroom drama. Read full review
75
Washington PostAlan ZilbermanOct 11, 2017
Director Reginald Hudlin handles the story with just enough finesse to make its details more thrilling than uneasy. Read full review
75
Boston GlobePeter KeoughOct 11, 2017
More problematic for Hudlin is the nature of the case — only by proving that a rape victim is a liar can Friedman and Marshall win an acquittal for their client. Fortunately, the case (in the film, if not in real life) is resolved in such a way that racism and misogyny are found equally guilty. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleOct 11, 2017
As played by Boseman and Gad, Marshall and Friedman are a complementary pair, like something you’d see in a buddy movie — one fit and one fat, one black and one white, one tall and one short, one calm and one stressed, but both Americans working together in a just cause. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreOct 11, 2017
Marshall makes for an entertaining take on history and Boseman’s winning performance a playful spin on an icon the passing decades have chiseled in stone as a Great Man and one of the giants of American legal history. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranOct 12, 2017
While the film is constructed from top to bottom for maximum popular entertainment, it is unwilling to let us leave the theater without reminding us that these battles are far from over. Read full review
70
Village VoiceAlan ScherstuhlOct 12, 2017
Even in this glossy pulp fictionalization, Marshall is filled above all else with truths that still demand telling. Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternOct 12, 2017
Marshall — a terrific performance by Chadwick Boseman — comes off at the outset as full of himself to overflowing. In other words, here’s an irreverent movie with a quirky ring of truth. Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzOct 12, 2017
Boseman and Gad are both good. Marshall drinks and smokes and fights in a bar; certainly that's a side of him we haven't seen before. If anything, he's portrayed as a little too good at his job, a risk-taker whose every courtroom hunch pays off. It's an interesting approach to the story, but it also holds the film back a bit. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyOct 11, 2017
Marshall is a solid, straightforward courtroom drama with proud liberal credentials, one that could have been made by Norman Jewison around 1967. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubJesse HassengerOct 14, 2017
This breezy approach has its limits; Marshall isn’t so different from a well-made TV movie. But it plays well on the big screen anyway, and there’s some relevance in the way it depicts competing forms of bigotry—racism alongside anti-Semitism and expectations about female sexuality. Read full review
67
ConsequenceAllison ShoemakerOct 12, 2017
Boseman, wildly charismatic, captures Marshall as a magnetic figure, and his drive and fervor are intoxicating. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovOct 11, 2017
The screenplay by father-son team Jacob and Michael Koskoff, the latter of whom is also an actual trial lawyer in Connecticut, is tight and lean; even the courtroom scenes are punctuated by honestly unexpected revelations. Read full review
67
The Film StageJared MobarakOct 11, 2017
Boseman brings this badass attorney oozing warranted confidence to life opposite Gad’s non-confrontational everyman experiencing the true power of his occupation as a result. And Brown steals the show with an emotional turn able to earn empathy from the most jaded audience member like Spell did Marshall. It’s time new generations learn Thurgood’s name. Read full review
65
TheWrapRobert AbeleOct 12, 2017
Boseman’s roiling magnetism goes a long way toward making it all work. Read full review
60
UproxxVince ManciniDec 4, 2017
Having been conceived by a lawyer, Marshall feels designed to present the case that Thurgood Marshall was a great man, without letting too much nuance cloud the issue. Depth, complexity, moral gradations — these are dangerous notions in a story you’re presenting before a fickle jury. Marshall takes the same approach. Read full review
60
Time OutJoshua RothkopfOct 13, 2017
Marshall isn’t as flashy as it ought to be. Read full review
60
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottOct 12, 2017
A surprisingly embraceable courtroom drama. Read full review
60
The New York TimesManohla DargisOct 12, 2017
Like his character, Mr. Boseman is the star of this show, while Mr. Gad is the second banana and often comic relief. Both performers are natural showmen who never step on each other’s moment; they’re fun to watch. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsStephen Whitty Oct 12, 2017
Marshall makes a good case for its hero as one of the brightest, boldest lawyers to ever walk into a courtroom. So why is it sometimes such a trial? Read full review
50
Paste MagazineTim GriersonOct 13, 2017
Failing to be incisive or moving, Marshall is content to be genial and unthreatening—two adjectives that have never been used to describe the long, hard, ongoing fight for equality. Read full review
50
IndieWireDavid EhrlichOct 12, 2017
The problem with this hokey courtroom drama isn’t that it says the right thing in the wrong way, the problem is that it ultimately doesn’t say anything at all. Read full review
50
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallOct 12, 2017
Despite another charismatic turn by Chadwick Boseman as Thurgood, Marshall gradually feels less like his movie. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineEric HendersonOct 12, 2017
Marshall arguably intends for societal 20/20 hindsight to provide the bulk of perspective throughout. Read full review
40
VoxAlissa WilkinsonOct 11, 2017
Casting the movie as Marshall’s story — and then skimping on Marshall himself, one of the most interesting figures in US history — winds up skewing the film in ways that end up inadvertently denigrating the subject. Read full review
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