‘Lincoln Lawyer’ refers to both Mick Haller’s car and occupation respectively.
The Lincoln is chauffeur driven thanks to a DUI arrest – and given the number of times Mick is either inebriated or on the way to that state it seems he hasn’t learned many lessons from his past – and Mick conducts much of his business from the back seat while the streetwise (read black) driver bumps classic hip-hop and R&B through the speakers.
Mick rhymes with slick – and he is – he is also fast moving, fast talking and often full of shit. He shamelessly works any available angle, talks to the right people regardless on which side of the law they stand, and is not above greasing the odd palm or two.
Mick’s typical clientele generally come from the ‘sketchy’ side of town, and he is happy to give the occasional freebie to those who supply him with ‘repeat business’.
On this day however Mick gets a red hot tip and hightails it to a holding cell uptown. Way uptown. There he meets with a particularly well to do young man named Louis Roulet (Ryan Phillippe) who has been charged with a heinous crime against a young woman though loudly and clearly proclaims his own innocence.
Louis is obviously a complete prick, but a wealthy complete prick with even more loaded and connected parents. They all want to see Louis’s name cleared quickly and painlessly regardless of the cost, and so Mick and his longtime friend and investigator Frank (William H Macy) set to trying to do just that.
Mick calls in favours and pulls some shifty moves to stay one step ahead of the prosecution, aided and abetted – albeit drunkenly – by his ex-wife and baby mama Maggie (Marisa Tomei). Due to the connection provided by both their careers and daughter Mick and Maggie see each other often, indeed they talk more and get along better (perhaps even having more sex) than most married couples.
In one scene though he took her shirt off while he played the bongos…
The only area where they don’t see eye to eye is the where the line of the law runs, for Maggie it is clear cut and straightforward, for a guy who has spent his life defending the ‘sort of innocent’ and ‘kinda not-guilty’, Mick sees things a little greyer.
This is the usual ‘did-he-dunnit, and if he didn’t who did-dunnit?’ flick, replete with all the twists, turns and developments that the genre demands. Describing events further would be doing the film or the viewing experience a disservice.
At a tick under two hours it is a long film, but to its credit it is well edited to keep things moving, so even when the plot demands backtracking and explanation it thankfully never gets boring.
I’m not a massive fan of the courtroom drama like Primal Fear, A Few Good Men and the like, but The Lincoln Lawyer is a winner, it boasts a good cast and benefits from good performances from McConaughey and Marisa Tomei (Mathew McConaughey can act and wear a shirt at the same time – who knew?).
Final Rating – 7 / 10. I can’t name an all time classic courtroom flick, to me this is one of the better examples but it is still no world-beater. To me a film like this is the cinematic embodiment of the usually bland descriptor ‘good’. The Lincoln Lawyer is a decent film suitable for a wider audience than it received, I see it as a courtroom drama that should have few objections.
