{"id":8104,"date":"2024-11-11T23:09:18","date_gmt":"2024-11-12T04:09:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=8104"},"modified":"2024-11-11T23:09:18","modified_gmt":"2024-11-12T04:09:18","slug":"the-lincoln-lawyer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/11\/11\/the-lincoln-lawyer\/","title":{"rendered":"The Lincoln Lawyer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Lincoln Lawyer<\/strong> (2011)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Lionsgate\/Drama-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 118 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (some violence, sexual content, language, drug references)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Brad Furman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: John Romano\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Cliff Martinez\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Lukas Ettlin\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: March 18, 2011 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Marisa Tomei, Ryan Phillippe, William H. Macy, Josh Lucas, John Leguizamo, Michael Pena, Bob Gunton, Frances Fisher, Bryan Cranston, Trace Adkins, Laurence Mason, Margarita Levieva, Shea Whigham, Pell James, Katherine Moennig, Michael Pare, Michaela Conlin, Mackenzie Aladjem, Reggie Baker, Javier Grajeda, David Castro.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $58M (US)\/$86.7M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: *** \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0I like courtroom dramas. I like watching trials and listening to witness testimony. I like slick, smooth-talking lawyers who know how to work the system, irking judges and prosecutors in the process.\u00a0 It stands to reason then I like The Lincoln Lawyer<\/strong>, a courtroom thriller starring Matthew McConaughey (A Time to Kill) as Mick Haller, an attorney who typically represents lowlifes until a major case falls into his lap by chance. Or is it?<\/p>\n

\u00a0Haller has made a career of defending bikers, drug dealers, hookers and others from L.A.\u2019s criminal underbelly. Due to budget constraints, he works out of his Lincoln Town Car (hence the title). Due to a DUI arrest, he has to have a chauffeur (Mason, The Crow) drive him around. His friend, bail bondsman Val (Leguizamo, Carlito\u2019s Way), hands him what will surely be a high-profile case. Louis Roulet (Phillippe, Cruel Intentions), the son of a wealthy real estate mogul (Fisher, Unforgiven), stands accused of viciously assaulting a prostitute.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Louis claims he\u2019s innocent. He says the whole thing is a set-up. It initially looks like he might be telling the truth until information is discovered connecting it to another of Haller\u2019s cases. He urged a client (Pena, World Trade Center) to plead guilty to a murder he swears he didn\u2019t commit. Now it looks like Haller made a colossal error in doing that. Could it be his rich client is guilty? The problem is he can\u2019t do anything about it because telling anybody would violate attorney-client privilege. Is this why Louis asked for Haller by name?<\/p>\n

\u00a0You know what else you need in a movie like The Lincoln Lawyer<\/strong>? A first-rate supporting cast playing interesting characters, that\u2019s what. Marisa Tomei (My Cousin Vinny) leads the pack as a prosecutor who happens to be Haller\u2019s ex-wife. They share custody of a young daughter. They don\u2019t hate each other, but she doesn\u2019t like that he helps free the criminals she tries to put away. Naturally, she has to recuse herself from Louis\u2019 case and hand it off to another prosecutor (Lucas, Sweet Home Alabama).<\/p>\n

\u00a0William H. Macy (Boogie Nights) plays Haller\u2019s investigator Frank. He\u2019s a quirky, hard-working type who\u2019s known his boss\/friend for a long time judging by the way they communicate. The cast also includes Bob Gunton (The Shawshank Redemption) as the Roulet family lawyer, Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) as a cop who doesn\u2019t even bother to hide his disdain for Haller, country singer Trace Adkins as the leader of a biker gang (regular clients of Heller) and Michael Pare (Streets of Fire) as a detective who worked the old murder case.<\/p>\n

\u00a0For the most part, The Lincoln Lawyer<\/strong> is a solid film. It\u2019s part courtroom drama, part character study and part thriller. In the lead, McConaughey does stellar work. After playing dim-bulb characters in a steady stream of dumb rom-coms like How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Failure to Launch and Fool\u2019s Gold, it\u2019s great to see him do what he showed he could do in A Time to Kill, Lone Star and Contact. It\u2019s a reminder he can effectively deliver a dramatic performance if given the right material. He has the necessary swagger and confidence to play a character like Mick Haller. He also has the sincerity to play a man conflicted. For him, it\u2019s a question of morals vs. ethics. He knows what the right thing to do is, but he\u2019s ethically bound to defend his client. How he solves this dilemma is a true display of intelligence, cunning and street smarts.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As a thriller, The Lincoln Lawyer<\/strong> is taut with tension as we watch Louis and Haller engage in a psychological tug of war. Phillippe is perfectly cast as the manipulative rich kid anybody can tell is guilty of something. He\u2019s a total sociopath. He knows he has Haller over an ethical barrel and constantly makes sure he knows it too. An element of mystery comes into play after a major character is killed. I don\u2019t want to reveal too much about this aspect of The Lincoln Lawyer<\/strong> except to say that the last-minute revelation is rather arbitrary and, let\u2019s face it, predictable. I wasn\u2019t surprised.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Based on the best seller by Michael Connelly and directed by Brad Furman (The Take), The Lincoln Lawyer<\/strong> is the kind of movie they don\u2019t make enough of anymore. It involves actual people that could conceivably exist in real life. Nobody has superpowers. None of the action involves CGI effects. It doesn\u2019t leave you with a splitting headache. It\u2019s as down to earth as a movie can get. It benefits from a tight, well-written screenplay by John Romano (Nights in Rodanthe), one that author Connelly admired greatly. The score by Cliff Martinez (Traffic) is reminiscent of 70s urban actioners. Furman\u2019s direction is confident and sure-footed. In short, The Lincoln Lawyer<\/strong> is a good movie. I wouldn\u2019t mind seeing more adaptations of Mick Haller novels.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Lincoln Lawyer (2011)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Lionsgate\/Drama-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 118 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (some violence, sexual content, language, drug references)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Brad Furman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: John Romano\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Cliff Martinez\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Lukas Ettlin\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: March 18, 2011 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Marisa Tomei, Ryan Phillippe, William H. Macy, Josh Lucas, John Leguizamo, Michael Pena, Bob Gunton, Frances Fisher, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8241,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-suspense-thrillers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/The-Lincoln-Lawyer-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8104"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8242,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8104\/revisions\/8242"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}