The Lincoln Lawyer: Sloppy defense

The Lincoln Lawyer (2011) • View trailer for The Lincoln Lawyer
Three stars (out of five). Rating: R, for profanity, violence and sexual content
By Derrick Bang 


Matthew McConaughey is perfectly cast as novelist Michael Connelly’s cocky defense attorney, Mick Haller, and John Romano’s screenplay is impressively faithful to the novel of the same title.

No surprise there. Connelly’s engaging book — the sort of page-turning pot-boiler one loves to have while flying across the country — reads like a film script.

Although the charges against Beverly Hills playboy Louis Roulet (Ryan
Phillippe, right) are grim, resourceful defense attorney Mick Haller (Matthew
McConaughey) has several tricks up his sleeve. But even Haller is destined to
be surprised, as this case spins off in a few unpredictable directions.

Unfortunately, director Brad Furman does the project no favors. His bombastic, exploitative approach adds an air of overwrought cheesiness to these proceedings, and he too frequently allows his characters to stand and declaim in the manner of first-year drama students. As a result, McConaughey’s performance is wildly uneven: gritty and persuasive at one moment, laughably over the top at other times.

And Furman may be the first director to encourage or tolerate sloppy work from the usually exceptional William H. Macy.

Not that we should be surprised. Pedigree always tells, and Furman’s only previous big-screen credit is 2007’s trashy armored car heist flick, The Take: reasonably diverting as a junky, made-for-cable quickie, but nothing to write home about. And while The Lincoln Lawyer, as a property, certainly represents a step up for Furman, he doesn’t rise to the occasion. I kept wishing Connelly had been able to hold out for a better director.

Casting is another problem. The first major chunk of Connelly’s novel is a classic mystery, with respect to who did what to whom, before this information is revealed and Haller subsequently winds up with a whole new set of problems. Alas, that tantalizing puzzle is blown practically from the moment we meet all the major players in this movie, because the actor in question couldn’t look more guilty if he wore a sign around his neck. To a degree, that’s because this actor always looks like a smug, arrogant bastard ... but, again, Furman could have tried harder to conceal the obvious.

Haller is introduced while plying his trade in his “office,” which happens to be the back seat of his Lincoln Continental sedan, invariably driven by streetwise colleague Earl (Laurence Mason, appropriately cool). Connelly’s book explains this intriguing affectation, but Furman can’t be bothered with such details, so audience members are left to wonder why Haller can’t afford a proper office environment.

That aside, Haller is quite willing to work with social misfits, whether members of a rough-trade biker gang or hookers struggling with a drug habit. For the most part, though, Haller demands regular visits from “Mr. Green” ... which is to say, suitable payment for services rendered.

Stop-Loss: A total loss

Stop-Loss (2008) • View trailer for Stop-Loss
Two stars (out of five). Rating: R, for violence and profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.28.08
Buy DVD: Stop-Loss 

When settling back to enjoy a film, few things are more aggravating than bad drama that trivializes a legitimate real-world crisis.

Stop-Loss is just such a film.

With everybody including the police, military and even good friends hunting
them down -- not to mention the need to think straight at every turn -- Michele
(Abbie Cornish) and Brandon (Ryan Phillippe) nonetheless find time to stop
at a bar and down quartets of tequila shots, as the third act of this silly drama
grinds toward its preposterous conclusion.

Regardless of one's views on the Iraq war, the accelerating practice of "surprising" soldiers — by retaining them after the completion of their required (and anticipated) term of service, via a sort of "back-door draft" that places them back in harm's way — is unpleasantly sneaky at best, and emotionally shattering at worst. It's the sort of fine-print, loophole behavior that one would expect of a duplicitous used car salesman, rather than U.S. government representatives who should be grateful for services rendered.

I've no doubt a compelling fictionalized story could be told about this practice.

I'm still waiting.

Stop-Loss desperately wants to be that film, but director Kimberly Peirce's script — co-authored with Mark Richard — is insulting, infantile claptrap apparently designed solely for anti-war agitators. I can't really fault the young actors, most of whom do their best with what was presented, but the narrative moves from dumb to dumber until it becomes impossible to accept any part of the story being told.

I hate to say this, but it's precisely the sort of vacuous nonsense I'd expect from an MTV Films production: all hot air, overwrought melodrama and irritating cinematographic technique at the expense of honest emotion or credible writing.

I expected much, much better of Peirce, whose previous film — Boys Don't Cry — was highlighted by gripping acting and a quietly compassionate script that easily could have slid into bathos, but didn't. Peirce demonstrated sensitivity, intelligence and restraint in almost every facet of Boys Don't Cry, qualities wholly absent in this new film.

Star Ryan Phillippe looks right at home, as well he should, having covered similar ground in Clint Eastwood's vastly superior Flags of Our Fathers. Phillippe stars here as Sgt. Brandon King, introduced on duty at a checkpoint in Iraq; he and his squad buddies try to make the best of a bad situation that gets worse quickly, when insurgents fire upon them from a passing car.