Jamie Foxx’s Courtroom Thriller Flopped in Theaters, Deserves a Netflix Reevaluation!

After graduating from Harvard University, Bryan Stevenson could have chosen a highly lucrative career path. Instead, he opted to move to Alabama to represent those wrongly convicted, supported by a local advocate, Eva Ansley.

One of his earliest and most explosive cases was that of Walter McMillian who, in 1987, was sentenced to death for the high-profile murder of an 18-year-old girl, despite substantial evidence proving his innocence and the reliance on testimony from a criminal with dubious motives…

Released in late January 2020 to polite indifference, “Just Mercy” was unfortunately a sharp financial disappointment for Warner Bros, earning just over $50 million. Without intending any pun, this is quite unfair; the film directed by Destin Daniel Cretton truly merits a thorough reassessment.

Strongly led by Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx, the film narrates the true story of African-American lawyer Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, who worked to defend the most impoverished inmates wrongfully or illegally sentenced to death. Stevenson is a brilliant, if not admirable man, who helped free no fewer than 140 death row inmates. Four of these individuals even make an appearance in the movie.

The character played by Jamie Foxx, despite overwhelming evidence of his innocence, spent six years in a 3×3 meter cell under inhumane conditions. While the film might not be a masterpiece and Hollywood has often explored such themes, it remains a powerful argument against the death penalty, a topic unfortunately still relevant today.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, since 1973, at least 200 individuals who were wrongfully sentenced to death in the United States have been exonerated. This highlights the alarming number of judicial errors in the country…