BEFORE: Just a few days after revising my schedule, I've had to revise it again - now the release date of "Bill & Ted Face the Music" has been changed from August 14 to August 28, which is also the date that "The New Mutants" is allegedly going to be released. (Do I even dare hope this is true? That film's been delayed already four times, and that was BEFORE the pandemic...). And so I've had to move things around yet again, because I just can't go the whole month of August without watching a movie, and I don't think I can cram all the movies I wanted to watch in August and September into the 32 days between August 28 and October 1. (I just checked, it's 36 movies, so it could be done, but that would involve a LOT of doubling up in September, I'd never sleep.)
So I've got to revise my schedule, and find some new back-ups in case the films I want to see don't make it to the theaters. I also had to find a chunk of my chain that could be taken out, flipped in reverse and put back in without too much disruption, thus moving the slot that I'm saving for "Bill & Ted" closer to the end of August, and away from the beginning. This was inevitable, I suppose, so better to do it now than to be scrambing in mid-August. And as an added safeguard, I've now made the list Covid-Proof for both "Bill & Ted Face the Music" and "The New Mutants", meaning that if theaters don't open in late summer, or these two films don't make it to the big screen in August, then I've got a path that neatly sidesteps around them. I can now drop "Bill & Ted" and its neighbor film from the chain if needed, and the chain will simply close up around the hole via a new link. And if I can't see "The New Mutants", the animated film "The Addams Family" is already standing by to take its place. This has in fact been my default plan for a while, because I just won't believe that "The New Mutants" is going to hit the big screen until I'm sitting in the theater with popcorn in my hands and I see the opening title. But "The Addams Family" links neatly to "It: Chapter Two", so I'm set.
"Wonder Woman 1984" is now off the table for me, I'm afraid. As I said before, I was holding a spot for it in mid-August, but that slot has now moved to early August, and I've substituted two replacement films in Wonder Woman's place. So now even if it gets released on October 2, I won't have a slot for it, I'll be in horror movie mode then. I'm still holding out hope for "Black Widow", though, possibly on November 6. Can we open theaters by then? Florida people? Texas people? Can you put your damn masks on and get your virus numbers down by then? Look, I'm not just asking for me and my movie chain, that would be selfish - it's for your own good, all of you. Let's get it together.
I moved my slot for "Black Widow" at great expense to early November, and the plan is still to use it to connect "Jojo Rabbit" and "Hellboy" (2019). But if "Black Widow" doesn't get released, I can move "Hellboy" to start of the horror chain instead of the end - but then I'll have to find another path to Christmas, using another film like "The Perfect Score" - and I'm just not seeing that path. I've found the paths from "Hellboy" to every single Christmas film on my list, in varying numbers of steps - but none of that will be possible if "Black Widow" doesn't hit the big screen. So I'm betting my perfect chain this year on Marvel getting their next film out in early November. Stay tuned, maybe we can have a vaccine by then? Or can we get this film out to the public some other way, hmmm? I didn't work out a way to link 290 films together just to break the chain with (approximately) 10 to go.
Matthew McConaughey carries over again from "The Gentlemen".
THE PLOT: A lawyer defending a wealthy man begins to believe his client is guilty of more than just one crime.
AFTER: Well, if you've wondered over the last couple of years what the inspiration was for Matthew McConaughey's prolific, surreal and often quite confusing commercials for the Lincoln Motor Company, I suppose this is as good an explanation as any. In this film he plays a lawyer who essentially runs his whole legal practice from the back seat of a Lincoln Town Car, no doubt from the necessity of travelling all across Los Angeles between courtrooms, prisons and his daughter's soccer games. Yes, he's got a chauffeur, but he's not stuck-up about it, and no, he's not living in the car, that would be a different sort of movie. But it does tell you something about his level of success, perhaps, because a very successful lawyer would probably have an office that couldn't run out of gas, or be part of a larger firm where he might even have a desk, not just a briefcase. Maybe business has just been a little slow since the divorce.
That's not to say he doesn't have hustle, though - being mobile means he can make it across town for that meeting with a client who's been arrested on very short notice. Other clients know that if they want an appointment with him, they'd better round up a bunch of their biker friends and swarm around his car on the freeway. The biker gang's not really much for dressing up and visiting people in an office, anyway - they probably even prefer it this way. But it's a little sad to see at the beginning of the film that Mick Haller, our Lincoln Lawyer, is conning nearly everyone in one way or another, he's even overcharging that biker gang by lying about the cost of getting an expert to testify at the trial of one of their members. He's also bribing (sorry, promising Christmas gifts) to various bailiffs and prison guards so he can get special treatment when needed.
And into his world falls one Louis Roulet, accused of beating up a woman and threatening her with a knife, only he claims that SHE came on to HIM in a bar, he went back to her place and they had consensual sex after her other boyfriend left. Sure, then she beat herself up just so she could sue a rich guy. I guess it's possible, but this is a yarn that starts unraveling shortly after it's been spun. Just the smallest bit of research shows that the woman is a "professional", but a prostitute, not a professional blackmailer. Meanwhile Haller can't help but notice the similarity of this case to that of another client from a couple of years ago, and that man might now be in prison for a murder he didn't commit.
The real legal conundrum here concerns a thing called attorney-client confidentiality. All of Haller's conversations with his client are privileged information, and not meant to be shared. And ethically a lawyer is supposed to put up the best possible defense of their client in court, and act in their best interests, regardless of the client's guilt or innocence, or regardless of whether the lawyer knows or believes something about their guilt or innocence. So if Haller were to believe that his client were guilty of some other crime, he's not allowed to divulge that information about his client, because it would affect the current case.
For this reason alone, this film is one of the better legal dramas I've seen - we've got a conundrum here, or perhaps a paradox, where Haller's job is to defend his client, even if guilty, but he believes that the moral thing to do would also seek justice for the other offense. Conveniently this might also free his other client who's serving time, but when the two cases are juxtaposed, we've also got a conflict of interest situation. Getting the guilty man out of prison while also trying to get his current client accused of past crimes, while also defending him in the current trial, is the legal equivalent of breaking things off with your current girlfriend so you can date her sister. Sure, technically it's possible, but extremely tricky to pull off, and some damage is bound to occur along the way.
In this case, Haller fears for the safety of the people around him - his ex-wife and daughter, for example, because if he turns in his client for other crimes, that man could still go free on bail, and kill somebody close to Haller. And breaking attorney-client confidentiality would be unethical and could get him disbarred. Yet by doing his job properly, allowing a guilty man to be free and an innocent man to remain in prison, he's going to feel intense guilt and pay a moral cost down the road. (Now, the simplest solution would seem to be to just drop the case, and once that murderer is no longer his client, then attorney-client privilege would no longer apply. However, retaliation from this man would still be a possibility, so the quickest, easiest solution really isn't much of a solution, either.)
He can't just tank the case, either. His client would probably catch on if Haller just suddenly stopped filing motions and objecting to things in court, it would be blatantly obvious if he just started phoning it in. Instead he had to be really subtle about it, manipulating the system through subpoenas to make sure exactly the right people were in the room, calling a witness with a reputation for snitching on cellmates, and so on. He had to LOOK like he was putting up a fight defending his client, while actually slipping a few things in here and there to catch the attention of opposing counsel. Some of that may even be unethical, but in the big picture, more morally correct than doing nothing. Very clever.
I'm really relating the condensed version here, and I'm leaving out several key details, because I do think this is a great narrative and I don't want to give away all of the surprises. But ultimately the hero is redeemed, and we do see that he endeavors to treat his clients better in the future - for a while, anyway. Perhaps that seems a bit by-the-numbers but at least it also represents some personal growth coming out of the character's trials.
There's a series of legal thrillers with this character, written by Michael Connelly. There have not been plans for a sequel, however, but you gotta figure there's more material for one - but the word is that a TV series with this lawyer character is being developed instead. The same author wrote the novels that inspired the Amazon Prime series "Bosch", so if that one's successful, why not develop another one?
Also starring Marisa Tomei (last seen in "Just a Kiss"), Ryan Philippe (last seen in "Breach"), Josh Lucas (last seen in "Ford v Ferrari"), John Leguizamo (last seen in "John Wick: Chapter 2"), Michael Peña (last seen in "The Mule"), Bob Gunton (last seen in "Dolores Claiborne"), Frances Fisher (last seen in "The Host"), Bryan Cranston (last seen in "The Upside"), William H. Macy (last seen in "Shorts"), Trace Adkins (last seen in "Deepwater Horizon"), Laurence Mason (last seen in "Runner Runner"), Margarita Levieva (last seen in "Sleeping with Other People"), Pell James (last seen in "Only the Brave"), Shea Whigham (last seen in "Bad Times at the El Royale"), Katherine Moennig (last seen in "Everybody's Fine"), Michael Paré (last seen in "Streets of Fire"), Michaela Conlin, Mackenzie Aladjem, Reggie Baker, Conor O'Farrell, Jeff Cole (last seen in "The Hate U Give"), Donnie Smith (last seen in "The Ugly Truth")
RATING: 7 out of 10 plain brown envelopes
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