Well, I suppose this casting makes more sense than Tyler Perry as the Secretary of State, but in truth neither really works. THR reports Morgan Freeman will play Colin Powell in the long-developing biopic, Powell, about the lead-up to the Iraq War.
The film has been in the works for years, with Forest Whitaker set to take the role back in 2013. But the project never got off the ground, and now has been revived with Marshall director Reginald Hudlin behind the camera. Ed Whitworth's script is still in play, though, and it will focus on the case he made to the U.N. in support of George W. Bush's war in Iraq, based on the phony notion that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction. Of course, the evidence was soon discredited and it hurt Powell's sterling reputation. He's done his best to distance himself from the Bush Administration ever since.
None of this works for me. First of all, Hudlin, who is best known for directing comedies like House Party (a classic, but not because of him), turned out to be exactly the wrong director for Marshall, which starred Chadwick Boseman as Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. He never got the tone right and shot the film like a two-hander comedy. Nothing against Morgan Freeman but we have other African-American actors who can play powerful men of a certain age, don't we?
Maybe we don't. But at least this is another notch in Freeman's attempt to play every the entire U.S. government. He's been the President, the House Speaker, a U.S. senator, and usually stuff goes horribly wrong under his watch. Somebody ought to look into that.
