On the Basis of Sex is a no-nonsense, hard-nosed biopic featuring Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second woman to ever be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Focusing on a revolutionary case, Mortiz v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, director Mimi Leder highlights Ginsburg's first crack at bringing down the walls of inequality. Felicity Jones does an admirable job portraying Ginsberg and is able to bring an aspect of humanity to the character; that in which may be lost if just reading a book about Ginsburg and her early accomplishments. For all of its inspiration and engaging narrative, On the Basis of Sex still falters in a few areas, suffering from inconsistent pacing and a supporting cast that is (mostly) outshined by Jones.
The film opens with Ginsburg, along with a sea of men, marching to their first day at Harvard Law School. Immediately disregarded as a woman who is taking a Harvard man's spot, Ginsburg must work much harder than her peers, just to gain any respect and credibility. Drawing strength from her husband, Martin Ginsburg (Armie Hammer), a law student in his own right, Ruth sticks it out and graduates top of her class. Even with her impressive credentials, Ginsburg struggles to find a job with a law firm in New York, where they moved when Martin received an offer for a tax law firm. Defeated and desperate to make a change, Ruth takes a job as a professor at Rutgers Law School. One day, roughly 10 years after she takes her job, the Ginsburg's come across an interesting tax case; Charles Mortiz, a single man in Denver, was denied a personal care tax deduction because he was a man. Sensing an opportunity to shake up the outdated and sexist law, Ginsburg takes the case, and officially starts her lifelong pursuit for gender equality.
Mimi Leder and writer Daniel Stiepleman manage to elegantly convey a rather complicated tax law case. Unfortunately, on the surface, the subject matter can get quite convoluted and complicated, which is not always the best from an entertainment standpoint. The film almost exclusively follows Ruth, as every scene is dominated by Felicity Jones. A bit of life is injected with Justin Theroux's portrayal of Mel Wulf, a charismatic and calculated legal director at the ACLU. Pacing issues aside, the film's subject matter is very interesting if given a chance, and it is an important story that needed to be told.
On the Basis of Sex does a masterful job showing the struggles that Ginsburg dealt with on a constant basis, from being a woman in an overwhelmingly lop-sided "boys club", to taking care of her sick husband when he received his unexpected cancer diagnosis. Even though she graduated at the top of her class in law school, a career as a lawyer in the late 1950s was nearly impossible to obtain as a woman. Life was a constant uphill climb for Ginsburg; Leder and Jones impressively deliver an engaging and eye-opening look into her failures, successes, and what it takes to be great.