Excellent Drama with Fabulous Lead Performance

Rating: Null/10 (26 January 2015)

Selma (2014)
**** (out of 4)
Excellent drama about Martin Luther King, Jr. (David Oyelowo) and his attempt to stage a march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama during 1965. The film follows King as he falls into one road block after another including being rejected protection from President Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) as well as Governor Wallace (Tim Roth) trying to throw violence at them.
SELMA has been falling victim to some recent attacks because of it not being 100% full of facts. Well, I hate to break this to people but no "true story" film has ever been 100% truthful. Things are made up and changed for dramatic purposes all the time so I find that to be a pretty weak excuse to attack this film. SELMA, for my money, is a wonderful little film that manages to pack a nice punch and get its message across without having to preach or go for some sort of shock value like the previous years 12 YEARS A SLAVE. By comparison I think this film deserves a lot more praise than it's getting and a lot of the praise should certainly go to Oyelowo.
Playing a well-known famous person has to be one of the hardest jobs for an actor because most people watching you knows the real person so they come into the movie with an idea of what they should be seeing. Oyelowo is simply marvelous here because he manages to make you believe you're seeing King and not just an actor repeating his speeches. I thought there was a certain spirit that just graced Oyelowo's performance and it was so memorable and touching in spots. I thought the actor did a terrific job at bringing out the spirit of the character and the passion and fear of the events he's in. Both Wilkinson and Roth are very good in their supporting roles as are the rest of the players.
Another major plus is that the film has a terrific atmosphere to it. There's not a single frame where you feel like you're watching 2014 made up to look like 1965. Director Ava DuVernay does a very good job at making you feel as if you're back in 1965 with the look of the film. The cinematography, music score and editing are all top-notch as you'd expect with a film like this. I did find a few flaws in the film including the constant text to show the FBI following King as well as some of the musical selections took you out of what was going on.
With that said, it's really too bad that SELMA is gaining some critics due to something that most films do. I think the movie has its heart in the right place and put that up against the wonderful performances and you're left with an extremely moving picture that manages to tell a great story about one of the most important events in the Civil Rights movement.