2011 - THE LINCOLN LAWYER, a good crime thriller

 The brief no give away synopsis of this film is, a defense lawyer who works out of his car gets involved with several cases which turn out to be interconnected.  This is a film adaptation of the book's author Michael Connelly's story.  The film follows Connelly's book fairly closely which is probably the reason it works as well as it does

Michael Connelly is good at atmosphere in his novels and the film version of The Lincoln Lawyer does have a nice feeling for Los Angeles.  Connelly had been a crime reporter for many years so he brought that experience with him when writing this novel and his other successful book series about detective Harry Bosch.

 

 The creators of this film were smart enough to leave what worked in the book alone without signifciatnly changing things.  The end result is a tricky crime thriller.  The film  also has a decent mainstream Hollywood cast starting with Mathew McConaughey as Mickey Haller the defense attorney who is a bit of a shyster.  The rest of the cast has been carefully put together.  Marisa Tomei is Haller's ex-wife, William H Macey is a private investigator,  one time pretty boy Ryan Phillippe is one of Haller's clients.

 

It's actually kind of refreshing to see a mainstream commercial film actually hit it's targets for a change and produce an entertaining story.

The screenplay is by John Romano, the running time is 118 minutes.