Before being handed the reigns to the first entry in a potentially multi-part Marvel film franchise in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Destin Daniel Cretton had a short but respectable film career making movies that were either based on true stories or felt like they were. After Short Term 12 and The Glass Castle (both also starring Brie Larson), Cretton and his writing partner Andrew Lanham adapted Bryan Stevenson’s 2015 memoir Just Mercy.

As anyone who has read Stevenson’s multi-award-winning book knows, it’s an astounding recollection of inspiring work and horrifying injustice. Much of the memoir documents the author’s work with the organization he and Eva Ansley founded – the Equal Justice Initiative – but Cretton’s film focuses on the primary case covered in the book, that of Walter McMillian’s 1988 murder conviction and the subsequent legal appeals. Surprising no one, the depressingly familiar specter of racism seeped into every aspect of the case in Monroeville, Alabama, Walter’s hometown. Stevenson, only a few years out of law school and subject to the same prejudices and suspicions, signed on to achieve what seemed improbable at best – overturn the conviction in a small southern town and free McMillian from death row.

The primary trio of this cast – Michael B. Jordan, Brie Larson, and Jamie Foxx – is outstanding, but there are plenty of other quality players making strong contributions to the story, including Rob Morgan as fellow death row inmate Herbert Richardson, Rafe Spall as prosector Tommy Chapman, and Tim Blake Nelson as prisoner Ralph Myers. The emotional intensity is high, and the film can often be hard to watch, but it’s absolutely an important story that should be known by everyone.