Saturday Matinee: The Lincoln Lawyer starring Matthew McConaughey #book2movies

All right. All right. All right. It's Matthew McConaughey's birthday today so our pick for Saturday Matinee is The Lincoln Lawyer in his honor.

I’m pretty much in agreement with Roger Ebert on this one. As he said in the opening lines of his 2011 review: 

‘I like movies about smart guys who are wise asses, and think their way out of tangles with criminals. I like courtroom scenes. I like big old cars. I like “The Lincoln Lawyer” because it involves all three, and because it matches Matthew McConaughey with a first-rate supporting cast, while so many thrillers these days are about a lone hero surrounded by special effects.

Sounds like it could have been written today, right? 

The movie was based on the book by Michael Connelly. 
Here’s the rundown of the story from Connelly’s site ...

Mickey Haller has spent all his professional life afraid that he wouldn’t recognize innocence if it stood right in front of him. But what he should have been on the watch for was evil.

Haller is a Lincoln Lawyer, a criminal defense attorney who operates out of the back seat of his Lincoln Town Car, traveling between the far-flung courthouses of Los Angeles to defend clients of every kind. Bikers, con artists, drunk drivers, drug dealers — they’re all on Mickey Haller’s client list. For him, the law is rarely about guilt or innocence — it’s about negotiation and manipulation. Sometimes it’s even about justice.

A Beverly Hills playboy arrested for attacking a woman he picked up in a bar chooses Haller to defend him, and Mickey has his first high-paying client in years. It is a defense attorney’s dream, what they call a franchise case. And as the evidence stacks up, Haller comes to believe this may be the easiest case of his career.

Then someone close to him is murdered and Haller discovers that his search for innocence has brought him face-to-face with evil as pure as a flame. To escape without being burned, he must deploy every tactic, feint, and instinct in his arsenal — this time to save his own life.

The logline for the movie is more to the point:

A lawyer defending a wealthy man begins to believe his client is guilty of more than just one crime. 

Is this the greatest movie ever made? No. Is it even the best Matthew McConaughey movie ever made? No. But it’s a fun romp for a Saturday afternoon and seeing that it comes from the same guy who gave us Surfer Dude, Fool’s Gold, Sahara and Failure to Launch, The Lincoln Lawyer is at least closer to the higher road Oscar winning McConaughey has walked more consistently of late.

 Just for fun then, from Los Angeles with love and Marisa Tomei, Bryan Cranston, John Leguizamo, Ryan Phillippe, William H. Macy, Michael Peña and Frances Fisher along for the ride, you can stream The Lincoln Lawyer on Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, iTunes, Vudu and GooglePlay. 

Here’s the trailer

A lot of you are probably fans of both Michael Connelly’s Bosch books and the series starring Titus Willaver as Harry Bosch, an LA-based detective. I’ve been told it’s practically mandatory viewing for a Los Angeleno like me, while I confess I haven’t read the book or seen the series. Et tu?