My Film: 'The Lincoln Lawyer' 18-3-11

As I sat in college today, a friend of mine asked me to come to the cinema to see 'The Lincoln Lawyer. What was my first response? Just No! I had seen the trailer whilst on previous cinema outing and unimpressed by it. But I decided to go against my original judgement and sit through it as I am a A2 Film Studies Student and if I can't sit through a 2 hour film when it sucks then what is the point? Surely I would be able to enjoy the narrative and embrace my inner nerd and pick out the visual and technical successes.

How Shocked I was to find that actually I enjoyed the film as a whole with it's amazing soundtrack including the song, 'Ain't No Love In The Heart Of The City' by Bobby 'Blue' Bland and 'I Remember' by contemporary DJ, Deadmau5. As well as the amazing soundtrack, the cast list is far from shabby featuring some of the heavy weights of 'tinsel town'. Matthew McConaughey is finally able to shake of his recent person that forces him to act in romcoms to be able to play a serious part; he is backed up by William H. Macy as his second in command and The Fighter star, Marisa Tomei as his affectionate ex-wife and mother of his daughter.

Opposite these roles is, Ryan Phillippe as the playboy millionaire, Louis Roulet. This character epitomises the darker characters that Phillippe has played in the few films that I have seen him in. To be honest, I have seen very few of his movies but of the ones I have seen, his characters are never good natured. A key example of this is 'Crash' in which he plays a racist cop and in 'Cruel intentions' he plays the womanizing bad boy, Sebastian. I wish he could shake his persona, however foxy he may be as a bad boy. t is a little bit of a joy to watch him on the screen, yummy.

This film was good, edgy and included some beautiful fluid camera movements and shots (told you I was nerd) but it still could have been improved with some more narrative twists or better paced dialogue but it overall a good film from the virtually unknown Director, Brad Furman. This is only Furman's second feature length film and although it may not be up to the same standard of the more experienced directors, it does reinvigorate the dram genre in Hollywood.

My Star Rating:

7/10 *