80
Kevin Macdonald's generous, absorbing, family-authorized documentary on the late, still-reigning king of reggae music.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
80
What results is an immensely detailed overview of Marley's life and times, from the hillside Jamaican shack where he grew up to the snowy Bavarian clinic where he spent his last weeks in a fruitless attempt to cure the cancer that killed him in 1981, aged 36.
80
The New Yorker by Anthony Lane
Inspiring though Marley is, however, it tends to deploy his music purely as an illustration of his life. Not once, as far as I could tell, do we watch a song being played straight through from beginning to end. [23 April 2012, p.82]
100
The tunes, flooding every frame, remain perfect.
90
Village Voice by Melissa Anderson
Thoroughly researched and packed with phenomenal archival footage, it's a rousing tribute to a mesmerizing performer that forgoes blind hero worship.
91
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
Marley was directed by the gifted Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland), who shows off his chops not by doing anything dazzling - the film is documentary prose, not poetry - but by treating Marley as a man of depth and nuance, of inner light and shadow.
88
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
Marley, an ambitious and comprehensive film, does what is probably the best possible job of documenting an important life.