I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

A must-see if civil rights movement and anti-racism are your topics. Some great acting, and Boseman is mesmerizing. There's a few brilliant moments - the long long hesitation of the judge, the silent communication between Marshall and the accused man.

According to journalist Will Haygood, Thurgood Marshall "trafficked in miracles" in his brilliant legal career. As noted in this film biography, Marshall was the "prime architect of the legal battles for civil rights" in America in the mid-twentieth century. He won 29 out of 32 civil rights cases that he argued before the Supreme Court. In 1954, he won the landmark case of Brown v. the Board of Education that desegregated American Schools. And in 1967, he became the first African-American justice of the Supreme Court.This superb film focuses on the famous 1940 trial of Joseph Spell, the African-American chauffeur accused of raping his white employer, Eleanor Strubing. Working with attorney Samuel Friedman, Marshall served as co-counsel during the trial that eventually resulted in Spell's acquittal.The film is successful in presenting the world of 1940, introducing such figures as Langston Hughes and Nora Zeale Hurston. The dialogue is crisp with such memorable lines as Marshall's succinct goal in his civil rights battles: "It's not the fires I'm after, but the fire itself." A fictionalized scene in a bar in a fight ensues results in a simple statement by a woman that becomes the catalyst for Marshall's understanding of the Joseph Spell case: "Men will be men, and women will be women."The centerpiece of the film was the trial, which unfolded with great realism. It did not seem like a typically Hollywood written court drama, but one that proceeded on the unbalanced court system of the 1940s. The screenwriters took great pains to depict the hurdles faced by Friedman and Marshall in overcoming the prejudice of the prosecuting attorney, the judge, and the jury.

It is a great movie, but someone should be brave enough to tell the whole story of Thurgood Marshall. The man should be properly honored for his work. Oh and a book of his cases would be nice too.

I can give this movie nothing more than a 5 out of 10. Marshall is a fairly average movie all around. I was expecting a serious toned well made movie telling me something about a future Supreme Court Justice. Instead, I got a lackluster average courtroom drama. The acting is average and the characters are almost cartoon-ish. Had this movie been made in the early 1990's I may have been able to give it a 6, because that is what it feels like. A tired early 1990's courtroom drama. To see people rating this movie a 8, or 9 destroys my faith in humanity as a whole, this was not a great, spectacular movie that will make you think, it's a lazy boring sunday, "because there is nothing on," movie. It isn't awful just dated. With this being Thurgood Marshall, I was expecting something much more. I was expecting to see something better along the lines of great movies like "A Time to Kill," or something like that. This fell flat by a margin I seriously could not imagine. The dialog is pretty much a caricature that probably was written over the course of a weekend. It's a waste of a good story that could have been great had the film makers taken their time to make it so. As it is, this was likely just greenlighted because of the Marshall name, figuring they could squeeze a few bucks out to make some other flat movie in the future. Again, a 5 out of 10. Not a horrible movie, just average in so many ways that it fails to even live up to the ratings people have so far given it. I don't know if they are just biased in favor of the great man portrayed, but the movie itself is not the 7.1 out of 10 people are giving it at the time of this review.