Just Mercy review: in another year, and another film, Jamie Foxx would have walked off with an Oscar

Dir: Destin Daniel Cretton; Starring: Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Foxx, Brie Larson, Tim Blake Nelson, Rafe Spall, Rob Morgan, O'Shea Jackson Jr. 12A cert, 137 mins Michael B. Jordan launched his acting career playing a tragic street kid called Wallace, murdered when he becomes an informant, in Season One of HBO's The Wire. Since then, discounting the odd blip like Fantastic Four, he has committed himself with impressive pugnacity to one of the most politically interesting careers since Denzel Washington started out. His trilogy of films with Ryan Coogler – Fruitvale Station, Creed and Black Panther – make a huge range of points about black victimhood and heroism, scratching lines in unpredictable places between the two. Just Mercy, which Jordan produced as well as starring in, is his squarest bid yet to make a social-issue campaigning drama, by exploring the real-life career of a lawyer and activist called Bryan Stevenson, who set up his own practice to appeal against dubious murder convictions for clients on Death Row. It picks one in particular: the case of Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx), a married woodworker from Alabama who was arrested in 1988 on sketchy evidence for the murder of an 18-year-old white girl, Ronda Morrison.