The crime-fiction author Michael Connelly is so prodigious, you could imagine him writing his books sitting in the back of a car while being chauffeured between speaking engagements.
Maybe that’s why his literary character Mickey Haller rings true: A lawyer, just this side of shady, who conducts business from the backseat of a Lincoln Town Car. And why not? If you’re going to be chasing ambulances, an automobile is the perfect place for an office.
The movie version of the first novel featuring Mickey Haller, “The Lincoln Lawyer,” has now arrived, with Matthew McConaughey filling the central role. The result is somehow fitting: This is the movie equivalent of a book you buy from the rack at the airport, finish in a single flight and forget about.
Haller’s case involves a privileged businessman (Ryan Phillippe) accused of a particularly unpleasant murder. It’s a big case for Haller, whose usual work walks on the sleazier side of L.A. life.
Plot twists range from the satisfying to the outlandish, set against a So-Cal landscape that looks more than a little tired from overuse. Director Brad Furman wallows in the unhealthy world Haller travels through, without really illuminating it or making a point.
Good people keep popping up along with way, although the sense of marking time is strong. Marisa Tomei is Haller’s bemused ex-wife, shaggy-haired William H. Macy a wise-cracking private investigator, John Leguizamo a hustling informer.
Bryan Cranston and Michael Pena are in the mix, and Frances Fisher plays the kind of moneyed matriarch who might have been a fearsome figure in a private-eye novel by Raymond Chandler or Ross Macdonald. But here, her role is once-over-lightly.
Matthew McConaughey takes an easy-breezy approach to the lead, which was probably the right way to go. His status as a second-tier leading man, never quite destined to rise to the bankable level of the Cruise-Clooney-Pitt realm, fits the character in this case.
We watch Mickey Haller not because he’s a hero but because he’s flawed and clever enough to get himself out of a jam. That’s good enough for a Saturday- matinee time-killer.
“The Lincoln Lawyer”
Based on the crime novel by Michael Connelly, this once-over-lightly movie puts a disreputable lawyer (Matthew McConaughey) on a big case defending a privileged murder suspect (Ryan Phillippe). The movie’s all right as a time-killer, but everything seems basically second-tier and the L.A. setting feels tired. With Marisa Tomei, Ryan Phillippe.
Rated: R for language, subject matter
Showing: Alderwood, Cinebarre, Everett Mall, Galaxy Monroe, Marysville, Stanwood, Guild 45th, Pacific Place, Thorton Place, Woodinville, Cascade Mall
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
