The Lincoln Lawyer
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Marisa Tomei, William H. Macy
Director: Brad Furman
Runtime: 1 hour 59 minutes
Release year: 2011
Studio: Lionsgate
Some books like Michael Connelly’s The Lincoln Lawyer just beg to be made into movies. Six years is pretty quick to get a book into the cinema. In the case of The Lincoln Lawyer it was never a case of if the movie would get made only when it would get made.
Matthew McConaughey as Mickey Haller is hardly an acting stretch after tours of courtroom duty in Amistad and A Time to Kill. McConaughey has serious acting chops and brings them to bear on in a movie that is replete with talent. Playing Haller’s estranged wife Maggie McPherson is three time Academy Award nominee Marisa Tomei (The Wrestler). Both McConaughey and Tomei play their roles to perfection in what is a tightly written if sparsely directed movie that captures the viewer from the very first few moments of screen time.
The story of the Lincoln Lawyer is complicated as all good mysteries should be. The movie is a brilliant blend of procedural and mystery with enough areas of suspicion and doubt that it is unlikely that anyone who has not read the book will figure out whodunit. In a nutshell, a very rich young man is accused of a brutal crime. He hires Mickey Haller as his attorney. Haller is the kind of attorney who, as all good defence attorneys should, defends his client with extreme prejudice.
How far MIckey Haller is willing to go and how labyrinthine the truth really is, is what The Lincoln Lawyer is all about. The Lincoln Lawyer has already made it into my permanent mystery collection and should probably make it into the collection of most mystery fans.