The Lincoln Lawyer, an adaptation of a long-running series of novels by Bosch author Michael Connelly, is a fairly predictable, occasionally clunky legal thriller that's elevated by McConaughey's judge-coaxing charisma and bailiff-influencing charm.
Focus Featuresīefore 2012's Magic Mike, his Oscar-winning performance in Dallas Buyers Club, and 2014's True Detective kicked what came to be known as "the McConaissance" into high gear, the Dazed and Confused star was already finding entertaining ways to playfully upend his laidback persona.
The dynamic between Renfro and Sarandon makes this one of the more touching entries in the genre. (Tommy Lee Jones, a little off his game here, gets less to do as the ego-driven District Attorney.) Like in The Firm, the mob elements of The Client are ludicrous, packed with cartoonish villains and eye-rolling legal maneuvers, and the suspense sequences towards the end flirt with outright tedium, but director Joel Schumacher, who also helmed the 1996 adaptation of Grisham's A Time to Kill, bathes the movie in an over-the-top swampy atmosphere. His string of hits continued with The Client, which tells the rather simple story of a plucky young kid (Brad Renfro) who witnesses a suicide and the resourceful lawyer (Susan Sarandon) who helps him take on the system. After the box-office success of movie adaptations of his novels The Firm and The Pelican Brief in 1993, plus his run on the best-seller list, the legal thriller writer looked untouchable. (No disrespect to Witness for the Prosecution, Anatomy of A Murder, 12 Angry Men, The Verdict, or a number of other legal classics.) Think John Grisham and scenes where Tom Cruise beats up Wilford Brimley with a briefcase. For the purposes of this list, we're mostly thinking about the thrillers or thriller-adjacent ripped-from-the-headlines titles-meaning, we've left off a number of classic courtroom dramas, and skews towards the '90s and the present. At the very least, it's cheaper than law school.īefore you raise your objections, let's get some qualifications out of the way. Although they have largely faded away from the multiplex in recent years, it's always an ideal time to escape into the twist-filled, monologue-packed world of a legal thriller. Though ethically compromised lawyers have mostly retreated to the small screen, where shows like Billions and The Good Fight carry on the legal thriller tradition, there's no shortage of great legal thrillers to revisit.
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