Well well well, what do we have here? A Matthew McConaughey film, is it? Not another Rom Com, surely? How could they spin another one out of this cowboy’s conveyor belt career? What exactly is he up to in this one? I mean, how many minutes of leaden laughs and predictable plotting will I have to sit through before his curly blonds, baby blues, molasses smile and Texan drawl win her over? Presumably this time, it’s… let me see… Katherine Heigl? Right?! No actually. Apparently this time he’s playing it straight, a drama if you will. No popcorn chuckles, no romantic dalliances with dolls and dames and ghosts of raped Dickens. Instead, having spent the last ten years riding the Date-Night Train to Moneytown, McConaughey is going to show some versatility, some dramatic frailty as he tiptoes across the thin plot of The Lincoln Lawyer.
And it’s a very pulpy plot, typical of the pop-lit twists and turns expected of courtroom thrillers. This time round, it comes from Michael Connelly’s novel, and tells the tale of Mickey Haller, a hot shot lawyer in Los Angeles, dealing with the lowest of the low brow, a shyster cutting deals with bailiffs and biker boys on the side, known for getting you off the hook, or dropping you in it if things don’t look too good. He operates from a mobile office, a classic Lincoln sedan, driving around a grimy LA that’s a concrete metropolis, far from the city where dreams are made.
But that’s all about to change, when a bondsman tips him off to fattened calf Louis Roulet (Ryan Philippe), a rich-kid heir to a fortune, accused by a hooker of attempted murder who desperately needs help. The evidence seems slight, an easy win for Haller’s pockets, but his assistant DA former missus (Marisa Tomei) wants to throw the book at Roulet, and Haller for defending the likes of him. Before long, Haller begins to doubt his client’s squeaky-clean innocence, piecing together the strands of a possible serial killer and making contact with a former client he may have wrongly plea-bargained to life imprisonment.
It’s all run of the mill stuff, no different from any courtroom thriller you’ve seen before. Director Brad Furman pulls together a reasonably enjoyable tale of intrigue, that’s a lot more style over substance, but knots together some good performances, even from Mahogany himself, against the backdrop of a preposterous story. William H. Macy, particularly, does very well as Haller’s P.I. Levin, bringing a great energy, and a few laughs, to his scant screen time.
But there are certain judgements that The Lincoln Lawyer can’t escape, and without grounds for appeal. The film is sadly a good example of too many twists spoiling the plot, with every new petty criminal and dodgy detective having some sort of shady backstory. What often seems unnecessary ultimately is, and when all that pulp adds up to the most ridiculous plot twist of 2011, you’ll be left wishing they’d squeezed a bit more juice from the source material.
2 ½ Likes.
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