Reggae legend Bob Marley finally gets his biopic in Bob Marley: One Love. The film covers a few years in Marley’s life. It opens with Marley already being a superstar in 1976. The film follows with the assassination attempt, music, making the an album, and warring political parties. It all leads to Marley’s One Love concert in 1978.

In 1976, Marley (Kingsley Ben-Adir) is preparing to headline a concert that promotes peace in Jamaica as the country is seeing an escalation of political violence and is on the brink of civil war. After Marley is shot, as well as his wife Rita (Lashana Lynch), he jets off to London to work on his Exodus album. Through conversations and Ben-Adir’s wonderful performance, you learn Marley not only wants to create music, he wants his music to mean something, inspire people, and bring peace to the world. Marley is approached to come back to Jamaica to perform because they believe he’s the only one that can truly bring peace to the country.

Marley is faced with the decision of returning to Jamaica to help bring peace or the safety of him and his family.

With a runtime of just 107 minutes, director Reinaldo Marcus Green (King Richard) doesn’t have a lot of time to sum up who this larger than life figure was. Like most musical biopics, they hit the high notes (no pun intended). The film is packed with scenes of Marley and the Wailers rehearsing songs, playing in the studio, and Marley creating songs on his guitar. The song creation scenes are very interesting because it’s not clear if they actually happened that way, but they’re shot in a way that makes those moments feel magical. It shows why his music still connects with people today.

There’s very little time in the film dedicated to some of Marley’s faults. The film tap dances around infidelity and a physical altercation with his tour manager. These moments pass faster than a breeze on a windy day. Because the film doesn’t spend enough time on who Marley was as a man, those moments don’t carry a lot of weight.

The biggest fault of the film is there isn’t enough time to tell this story. There isn’t enough information about the civil war bubbling in Jamaica, the rival gangs, why someone would want Marley assassinated, how Rastafari played a huge part in how he saw the world, and how much it meant to the people when he returned to Jamaica.

If Bob Marley: One Love was a 3 or 4 part Apple TV series, I think it’s a much better story that gives the audience context to make these emotional moments matter.

The star of this film is Kingsley Ben-Adir and his performance. He’s incredible in every moment. His performance and the music is not only what will drive people to see this movie, it will be the thing audiences remember the most. The biggest fault of the film was not having one last scene of Ben-Adir performing at the One Love concert. Sadly, by the time the film gets to its climactic moment, it’s just title cards and actual footage.

Bob Marley: One Love is good but had the potential to be great. The short runtime and some of the narrative decisions hold the film back. At times it feels more like a visual album than a biopic. Someone joked the film was a two hour ad for Adidas tracksuits. It’s funny because I could see why someone would come to that conclusion. There’s more than enough good in this film to like it and not enough to make people love it.

Grade: B-