You really shoot your client's mother?

The Lincoln Lawyer

(2011)

What really sinks this is the clueless direction. I think it's trying to go for some kind of modern LA Noir, a la Body Heat, but Brad Furman is consistently unable to steer a sense of pace or tone, with disjointed scenes or clumsy staging.

His musical choices are intrusive or strange and his direction of emotive scenes leaves his actors stranded (McConaughey in his innumerable drowning of sorrows at the end of a bar scenes especially).

Fortunately the plot itself is quite involving, concerning McConaughey's defence of rich kid Ryan Philippe. He’s accused of murder, and there's expected twists and turns as the case develops. The DVD box quote had "The best legal thriller since Jagged Edge". Since The Juror might be a more accurate comparison of quality.

**1/2

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Poor Easy Breezy.

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(SPOILERS) There’s Jaws, there’s Star Wars, and then there’s Batman in terms of defining the modern blockbuster. Jaws’ success was so profound, it changed the way movies were made and marketed. Batman’s marketing was so profound, it changed the way tentpoles would be perceived: as cash cows. Disney tried to reproduce the effect the following year with Dick Tracy, to markedly less enthusiastic response. None of this places Batman in the company of Jaws as a classic movie sold well, far from it. It just so happened to hit the spot. As Tim Burton put it, it was “more of a cultural phenomenon than a great movie”. It’s difficult to disagree with his verdict that the finished product (for that is what it is) is “mainly boring”.

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Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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