DVD: The Lincoln Lawyer
Good, solid, standard movie mysteries are hard to find these days. Again and again, I find myself thinking I’d like to watch a film in which two cops stand over a murder victim and try to figure out what happened to him – and unless I turn on Turner Classics, there just aren’t any. The reason, I think, is obvious. TV has taken the genre over. You can watch just that sequence of events on any of a dozen shows with only minor variations. And they’re pretty well done too. Nice, satisfying little mysteries solved by anything from quirky mediums to by-the-book cops.
That’s pretty much what you get with The Lincoln Lawyer, a Matthew McConaughey vehicle based on a bestselling novel by Michael Connelly. It’s basically a long episode of the cancelled TV series Shark, but it’s still an entertaining couple of hours of viewing. It’s the stuff from the novel, which I also read and enjoyed, that elevates the pic from an hour’s worth of entertainment to a feature-worthy tale. Connelly knows how to make a character seem iconic, how to weave a plot, and how to deliver a satisfying conclusion. He did all that in the book and screenwriter John Romano translated it deftly to the screen.
The plot: a sleazy defense attorney gets a case bigger than his moral outlook when a young man is accused of assaulting a prostitute. Again, nothing surprising or terribly original, but expert and fun if you’re in the mood for a mystery.
It’s also a fine reminder why we cared about Matthew McConaughey in the first place. He’s excellent here, full of charisma that overshadows his character flaws – to a point. He should avoid future pairings with Kate Hudson at all costs (but who shouldn’t?) and stick to scripts like this.
I’m looking forward to seeing this. I loved the book – Connelly is one of the few writers I can think of who can make a defense attorney a sympathetic character.
I think “The Lincoln Lawyer” was one of Connelly’s weaker efforts. The subsequent Mickey Haller novels are better (I’m reading “The Fifth Witness” now, which so far is excellent). However, Connelly’s best are still his earlier Harry Bosch novels.
I saw this, it was good. This and Source Code are pretty good fare for hollywood these days.