MARLEY (PG-13) Calling Bob Marley simply a reggae musician is like calling The Beatles a boy band. When he died of cancer in 1981 at the age of 36, Marley was immensely popular around the world. His albums with his band The Wailers, like Catch a Fire, Burnin' and Exodus, were huge successes, and he helped popularize the Rastafari movement through his songs and image. He was from the Third World, and his music addressed the struggles of the poor and disenfranchised. It's probably safe to say that Mitt Romney isn't down with Bob.

Directed by filmmaker Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland, State of Play), Marley is the first official documentary on the legend, and for a project with the blessing of Marley's family (his son Ziggy served as a producer), it's surprisingly honest in its appraisal of the man. Fans have a tendency to romanticize their idols because their work is special to them. Family members distort the truth out of a sense of loyalty or because they understandably don't want family secrets aired in public. Marley is charismatic and brilliantly talented. But he also comes off as hypocritical and hard as a fist, which simultaneously makes him more appealing and human.

Macdonald, who had extensive access to family, friends and associates, doesn't aggressively dismantle the man's mystique, but he doesn't serve up a hagiography either. We learn about young Marley's life growing up in the Jamaican countryside. Marley's father, a rich white Jamaican of English stock, was never in his life. At the age of 12, Marley moved to Kingston with his mother and they lived in the Trenchtown slum, where gangsters, musicians and the country's soccer players came from. Marley never forgot his roots, and even when he moved to his posh Hope Road residence he was always in contact with Trenchtown. The movie's most gripping moments, however, focus on Marley's role as a social voice and how the country's political factions tried to exploit his influence for their gain. Jamaica in the 1970s was violent, and Marley was not immune from it. In 1976, unknown assailants shot him, his wife and his manager at Hope Road two days before a free concert. More violence followed him during his first trip to Africa, and the footage of a show in Zimbabwe is stunning and moving. It would've been nice to have songs played in their entirety, but there are enough great clips to satisfy.