Just Mercy  ★★★½

JAMIE Foxx delivers one of his best performances in the legal drama Just Mercy.

He’s a solid actor who may not always make great choices but is rarely in a stinker.

His best have included Django Unchained, Collateral, Ray and Dreamgirls, also demonstrating his versatility.

In Just Mercy he plays Walter ‘Johnny D McMillian, a young father struggling to make ends meet working as a tree feller in Monroe County, Alabama.

It’s 1987 and Alabama isn’t the ideal place for a black man to live, with the death sentence legal and racist attitudes prevalent.

A young white woman is murdered and Johnny D is charged and convicted, mainly on the basis of one white man’s evidence.

By the way, this is based on a true story.

Two years later we meet Bryan Stephenson, another young black man but highly educated and working as a legal intern in Georgia.

Bryan’s first posting is to Alabama where he tries his best to represent several clients on death row, including Johnny D whom he sees comparisons with how his own life could easily transcend.

In the face of institutionalised racism, police corruption and judicial incompetence Bryan battles over a period of years to free men unjustly sentenced.

The past statistics are frightening. When Bryan begins his crusade we are told that nobody has ever been released from death row in Alabama. More than 60 people have been executed since 1983 and a quarter of them have been proven innocent, or questionably convicted, too late.

Young writer and director Destin Daniel Cretton does a serviceable job of telling an interesting story, but its the performances of Foxx and Michael B, Jordan as Stephenson that make many moments of the film compelling and, at times, heart-breaking.