An abridged view of Bob Marley's life

  Aside from a stop as one the Kens in Barbie, British actor Kingsley Ben-Adir might be en route to an icon-centered career. In Regina King's One Night in Miami, Ben-Adir gave an almost bookish spin to his portrayal of Malcolm X.  Now, he appears as Bob Marley in director Reinaldo Marcus Green's Bob Marley: One Love. 

  Speaking in Marley's Jamaican patois, Ben-Adir radiates the power of Marley's stardom, along with a sense that, like many stars, something about Marley evaded capture. Ben-Adir, by the way, did his own singing. 

   Far from a comprehensive biopic, One Love covers the years 1976 to 1978, referencing Marley's youth in vaguely drawn flashbacks. 

   The flashbacks -- like lyrics in a memory song -- too often leave us wanting more information about Marley's formative years and certainly more about the journey that elevated Marley and his band, The Wailers, to prominence in the reggae world and beyond.

    After an assassination attempt on his life during a period of intense political strife in his native Jamaica, Marley moved to London, where much of the movie takes place. 

   Green's major accomplishment involves allowing his movie to spin in Marley's orbit, giving us flashes of how stardom in Europe pushed him off-center. We also get glimpses of Marley's Rastafarian beliefs, his copious ganja consumption, and his interactions with the Wailers.

      Marley's wife Rita (a magnetic Lashana Lynch) gives the movie its steadiest beat. She eventually erupts over Marley's infidelities and excesses. standing her ground with fiery conviction.

      Even in a movie that covers only two years, it sometimes feels as if Green (King Richard) is skimming,   touching on Marley's multiracial background and his conversation to Rastafarianism. He was raised as a Catholic.

      Much attention is given to the creation of Marley's signature album, Exodus, and the movie's other musical numbers land on the right bases, e.g., I Shot the Sheriff, No Woman, No Cry, and Get Up, Stand Up.  Ben-Adir captures Marley's on-stage performing style, nailing the agitated moves that animated his presence.

      One Love culminates with Marley's triumphant return to Jamaica, where he was adored. Ben-Adir's performance, replete with winking humor -- makes clear why Marley became an admired avatar of liberation and of a pan-Africanism that melded spiritual and musical aspiration.

     Marley died from melanoma at the age of 36. Brief as it was, his life deserved a richer movie. Despite the virtues of its performances, One Love feels truncated, even fragmentary.

     For now, Marley's music will have to stand as his most enduring legacy.

Bob Marley's short but amazing life

Simply and obviously put, Marley -- director Kevin Macdonald's involving and comprehensive documentary -- focuses on the life of singer/musician Bob Marley. But Macdonald's film has an expansive quality that goes beyond the simplicity its title suggests. Marley and its many tangents tend to waft over you like the irresistible rhythms of reggae, exposing us to a life that was about music, race, ganja, Rastafarianism, poverty in Jamaica and Marley's kaleidoscopic series of personal relationships. That's a lot of territory even for a 144-minute documentary, but Macdonald's big-screen biography covers most of it well while sampling enough of Marley's music to keep fans happy. Marley, we learn, was born to an 18-year-old black woman and a 50-year-old white British Royal Marine, who had little contact with his mixed-race son. Marley spent his early years in impoverished Jamaican backwaters, moved to Kingston, and eventually found a way to use his alienation to spur his musical creativity. Early on, Marley and the Wailers, offered their rendition of A Teenager in Love, adding soul and flavor to the Dion and the Belmonts hit, but Marley remains best known for such songs as I Shot the Sheriff , No Woman, No Cry and dozens more. As with many great creative figures, Marley can seem elusive, a charismatic star seen by Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland) through a variety of prisms: the observations of his wife Rita, the recollections of a daughter (one of 11 children), and of his fellow musicians and cohorts. We learn about the development of Marley's religious faith and about his womanizing, just about everything that Marley packed into a life the ended in 1981 when he succumbed to cancer at the age of 36. Neither an act of hagiography nor an expose, Marley takes an intriguing look at a life in which music, politics and spiritual fervor sought harmony and coexistence.