82
Metascore
32 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100EmpireEmpireA masterful documentary to rival Macdonald's "Touching The Void."
- 100Time OutJoshua RothkopfTime OutJoshua RothkopfThe tunes, flooding every frame, remain perfect.
- 91Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanEntertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanMarley 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.
- Marley is sure to become the definitive documentary on the much beloved king of reggae.
- 90Village VoiceMelissa AndersonVillage VoiceMelissa AndersonThoroughly researched and packed with phenomenal archival footage, it's a rousing tribute to a mesmerizing performer that forgoes blind hero worship.
- 88Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertMarley, an ambitious and comprehensive film, does what is probably the best possible job of documenting an important life.
- 80The GuardianAndrew PulverThe GuardianAndrew PulverWhat 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.
- 80Total FilmTotal FilmEvery second is earned in Macdonald's long, generous and rigorously detailed Bob doc. You might wish for more live material but what's here is stirring, probing and moving.
- 80The New YorkerAnthony LaneThe New YorkerAnthony LaneInspiring 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]