Paperaxle Reviews "The Lincoln Lawyer"

For several years now, I've been harboring a secret. It's one I never cared to admit, and to date, there is no 12-step program or a rehab center to help me cope with this problem.

I do not like Matthew McConaughey.

His very name sounds like a cat coughing up a hairball, and when you pronounce it out loud, it is as grating as fingernails on a chalkboard. When he appears in a comedy, he is about as entertaining as the ridges on a potato chip. Did you even realize he was in the movie "Tropic Thunder"? I didn't either, and when I watched it again recently, I noticed he slows the comedic pace of the movie like a cow on train tracks.

But he has made a couple of good movies. In "A Time to Kill", McC plays lawyer Jake Brigance, and did a great job with the role. If McC could only play lawyers, he would be on a star level with the Tom Toms (Hanks and Cruise), and I'd be able to at least tolerate his presence on the screen. And he can play a good football coach, like the character Jack Lengyel in "We Are Marshall". But just two great movies over a nearly 20 year period isn't a good batting average.

So it was with some hesitance that I saw "The Lincoln Lawyer". I had read the book a year or so ago, and the plot didn't stick with me very long, kinda like the taste of Wrigley's Spearmint gum. I gave it a chance, like I did with the other two McC movies mentioned in the last paragraph, and was pleasantly rewarded with 119 enjoyable minutes of a good movie.

McC plays Mickey Haller, a Los Angeles lawyer who works out of the back of a Lincoln Town Car. Haller mainly defends the downtrodden drug dealers and the like, but one day Louis Roulet (played by Ryan Phillippe) walks into his life. Roulet is a Beverly Hills playboy, and the son of a wealthy real estate executive, and Haller sees this as his chance to make the big time. Unfortunately, Roulet is accused of rape and the attempted murder of a woman he meets in a bar, and Haller agrees to defend him. Along the way, we realize that things are not as they seem, and the movie quickly moves away from a "whodunit" to a "howdunit", especially when Haller's best friend and investigator, Frank Levin (played by William H. Macy) is murdered and Roulet is the chief suspect. But Roulet is at home with an ankle tracer, and cannot possibly be a suspect... can he?

One false note though. Not sure why Marisa Tomei, as Haller's ex-wife, is in the movie. She does a great job in the role, but it really doesn't contribute anything to the story.

Some good surprises, and some interesting twists and turns, make this a better than average legal thriller. If McC wants to follow up this movie with a sequel (author Michael Connelly wrote three more books in the Mickey Haller series), I'd have no hesitation about seeing another one.

I'm almost tempted to start admitting that I am getting to like McC, but I'll wait until I see what he does next, even if it's only another commercial telling us "Beef. It's what's for dinner."

Giving this one three Cadillacs and a Subaru. Starts March 18th.