News & Interviews for Mangrove: Season 1

Critic Reviews for Mangrove: Season 1

Audience Reviews for Mangrove: Season 1

• Jun 26, 2021

  Mangrove reads similarly to Bigelow's Detroit in many ways. Both showcase police brutality and racism across a similar time period (1965-1970) in the Western world, and feature courtroom politics. The difference lies in location, characters, and outcome. Mangrove employs enough characterisation and contemporary cultural input to transcend its rather familiar storyline in favour of transmitting an immensely engrossing viewing experience. Every main performance is superb, from Parkes to Wright. The white characters are primarily racist caricatures (although likely accurate to the social landscape of the time), played well enough to be dislikable. The departures from this mould enhance the impact of the resolution, though. The editing and camera work was noticeably brilliant. Some of the transitions brought an air of gusto and artistry without ever bridging the gap to pretentiousness. With a story worth telling, McQueen again cements his status as one of the most talented directors working today.
  Ethan T
• Jun 22, 2021

  Small axe empezó fuerte y mucho
  L s
• Apr 27, 2021

  Part of 5 movies in the series called Small Axe directed by Steve McQueen. The movie was about the Mangrove Nine trial in London, 9 African-Caribbean who were accused of inciting violence in a protest against police harassment to the community. The Trial of Chicago 7, which was also about a trial, was dynamic and fast-paced. Mangrove, on the other hand, was slower, but spent more time on the characters' speeches and dialogues. The plot was straightforward, so the quality depended entirely on the actors' performances. And I was thoroughly amazed and enjoyed the passionate acting from everyone in the movie. Also notable was the camera work. There were a couple of scenes where after the event ended, the screen lingered on an object or people for a long time to prolong the effect of the events. As for problems, the character Frank Crichlow was supposed to be the main focus. However, the other characters were those that had the moments in the movie, and Frank didn't really get his big moment as a main character. Overall, despite the plot being nothing new, the passionate performance from the solid cast reemphasized the harsh and unjust treatment from the broken system against the black communities. 8.5/10
  Nguyen D
• Mar 24, 2021

  Awesome performances and an excellent historical account.
  M D
• Mar 11, 2021

  Although repetitive in it's long speeches it offers a fresh look at an old subject.
  

  Igor O
• Mar 08, 2021

  It's a shame Shaun Parkes won't win an Oscar for his performance in Mangrove. Never mind the fact the entirety of the performance is mesmerizing, but the man deserves a statue for the single shot that remains on his Frank Crichlow as the jury reads their verdicts for both him and the remainder of the Mangrove Nine. It's astonishing, breathtaking, and all the adjectives that might hope to accurately describe the greatness that can't truly be captured with words. Chronicling the first judicial acknowledgment of behavior motivated by racial hatred within the Metropolitan Police, Mangrove is every bit as much a call for justice as it is a commentary on the explicit inequalities of the world. Despite being one part of a larger series, Mangrove conveys its vitality with the quality and skill of any other Steve McQueen film. The cast is first-rate, the period detail is on point, and as much is true with every other contributing department, but it's the antithetical tone of the environment within Crichlow's Mangrove restaurant that populate the first half of the film and that of the tone inside the courtroom throughout the second half of the film that is most effective in defining McQueen's central thesis which is more a question posing why it's so hard for those with all to make room for others with less.
  Philip P Super Reviewer
• Feb 12, 2021

  I'm sure it has it's audience. I did not find it captivating enough to hold my interest. I'm not a big fan of many of these movies that zoom in on everything. They make me dizzy.
  Mike L
• Feb 08, 2021

  Good work by Steve McQueen again. Good concept, good execution.
  Erick F
• Feb 04, 2021

  Very, very basic civil rights fare. Complete with plenty of grandstanding, righteous freakouts and soulless bad guys. Even agreeing with most of it however, won't stop me from commenting on how uninspired it seemed. Certainly no 7 Years A Slave, much less Hunger.
  Arseniy V
• Jan 18, 2021

  I know that so much of the time comparisons are odious, but I will instill that odious act into my review anyway. While I've seen Lovers Rock at the top of a number of best of 2020 lists, I saw Mangrove as the better, more complete film. It felt like a full, complete statement for me. No, I was not just caught up in another courtroom drama, with all the heavy, intentional melodrama that so often infiltrates such settings in the movies. I was 'caught up' in an engrossing true story with an excellent screenplay from director Steve McQueen and Alastair Siddons, in the intense, passionate performances that gripped me from the start, and by the brilliant dialogue. The exchanges between the beaten down, berated, but still defiant Mangrove 9 and their friends and neighbors of Notting Hill are authentic and just riveting. But much that same can be said of the scenes of the trial. But I was also captured by McQueen's use of the camera and that of cinematographer Shabier Kirchner. Even with all the ideas and layers of meaning and intent films can convey with dialogue, the screenplay itself, McQueen always keeps in the forefront of his mind that cinema is first and foremost a visual medium. We tend to react more viscerally to the immediacy of the visual image, especially one particularly striking; one that projects realism profoundly. And what is a more immediate and striking image for viewers than the human face? McQueen's close-ups on Beese, Howe, Jones-LeCointe and especially Crichlow express that misery, the hopelessness, the passionate rage and desire, the indignity and dignity the black community lived with every single day of every year there for far too long. As the face of Pulley projects at us what he truly was- a bully bastard racist liar ensnared in the very hateful intolerance and dishonesty of such wicked men. They got the look of the time right, it seems to me, and by the reviews of a great many other critics. As in Lovers Rock, Mangrove recreates the time and place so well. But then McQueen, the crew, and this brilliant cast got everything right. Extra praise goes to Wright, Spruell, Howe (fantastic courtroom speeches!), and certainly to Parkes as a man trying his damnedest to live by the rules of the land. But those rules are just part of a game; a wicked game, but one that can be managed if not defeated. 4 stars
  Adam C

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