Good but not great

Rating: 7/10 (8 February 2015)

Let me deal first with what for me was a major distraction; the accents of the actors playing LBJ and George Wallace. There were just not convincing and kept slipping in and out of a mild southern drawl to a mid Atlantic anonymity and back again. Their performances were okay - but not wholly convincing and compromised by the accent issue.
The film itself deals with Martin Luther King Jr and the 1965 peaceful protest movement to enable legally enfranchised citizens to exercise that franchise - the issue being that black Americans in many states were denied registering to vote by a variety devious means.
The story moves along well - we see the tensions in and caused by Luther King's approach and it does raise some legitimate questions, for example can a peaceful protest ever be simply that if it evokes a violent response? It also makes the point that a free press is important, with nationwide broadcast of official violence promoting a positive response form across to the country.
Of course any film about Martin Luther King Jr has a hopeless job of competing with the live footage readily available of the man himself but this film makes a good fist of it.