BEFORE: This one's easy, Denzel Washington carries over from "Fences", and borrowing this Academy screener gets me to the next actor who'll be around for three days. Another way I could have gone was to link from "Fences" to "Hidden Figures", the two films are sort of linked in my brain because they were both up for Best Picture in the 2017 Academy Awards, and some people seemed to confuse them, or mention them in the same breath because they were the two African-American themed pictures. One commentator even combined the two titles accidentally, calling them "Hidden Fences", and that moniker sort of stuck in people's brains for a while last year. The two films share one actress, Saniyya Sidney, so I could have justified watching them next to each other, but I'm going to go a different way with it.
But, I'll get back to "Hidden Figures" in a few days - this way I can sandwich another four films in between them, clearing a few more off my list and then I'll hit Father's Day and July 4 right on the money.
THE PLOT: A driven idealistic defense attorney finds himself in a tumultuous series of events that lead to a crisis and the necessity for extreme action.
AFTER: An element carrying over from "Fences" is a black character who's not quite all there - while Roman J. Israel is not wandering the streets, playing a trumpet and chasing hellhounds, he's not 100% mentally there, either. He's competent enough to be a lawyer, but he's got zero social skills, and there are suggestions that he may have a form of autism or perhaps Asberger's, another lawyer refers to him as a "savant" because he's got all the legal codes and stats memorized. Plus he's eschewed all romantic relationships for decades, while functioning as a sort of silent partner in a small, struggling law firm. This implies some kind of fear of crowds, or perhaps a fear of social interaction, yet he's high-functioning when it comes to writing legal briefs or quoting precedents from case files. (A similar character was depicted in "The Accountant", where that guy was a hitman and also some kind of accounting genius, despite being somewhere on the spectrum.)
My first thought here is, maybe this is possible, although I don't know enough about autism or savants to say for sure. And my second thought is, it's something of a commentary on our times that to depict an honest, well-intentioned lawyer, a screenwriter felt the need to give this character this sort of back-story, because audiences probably wouldn't believe it if they just depicted an honest lawyer as if that were a perfectly normal thing to be. They've got to exist out there somewhere, but not in movies - maybe that says more about movies than it does about lawyers, I'm not sure.
Anyway, Roman is also something of a throwback, because he became a lawyer during the 1960's, a time of intense social activism and the civil rights movement, so that's the angle from which he approaches law. And he's been content with his place in a small, activist-oriented firm for such a long time, that when his boss/partner has a heart attack and falls into a coma, he doesn't know what to do. His partner's niece calls in an old friend, a high-profile lawyer in a larger firm, and former student of the partner, so settle the active cases, then essentially close down the practice. Roman's attempts to appear in court and work on the cases don't go very well, largely because he speaks his mind and has no social skills.
Eventually the high-profile defense lawyer offers Roman a job at his firm, largely to work on pro bono cases that might also be high-profile. This more "corporate" lawyer is a much tougher character to get a handle on, as I was never sure about whether he was doing the right things for the right reasons. What was his angle? Was he inspired by his mentor's illness to start doing more pro bono work, or was he more interested in getting publicity for his firm? It's unclear, but maybe in a good way, because each viewer can then decide for himself if this guy is on the level.
Meanwhile, Roman seems to go through a crisis of faith - nothing seems to go right on the cases that he's working on, and his decisions put the firm at risk. Even speaking at the activist network doesn't go well, because Roman's attitudes are so outdated - the simple suggestion that a man should give up a seat for a woman puts him in a P.C. minefield, where a modern woman gets insulted that a man should have to stick up for her, when she's capable of asking for a seat for herself. Roman means well in this case, but he's not up on the modern lingo, and gets accused of being part of the patriarchy, pandering, and other problematic things that you see all the time whenever a white person on Facebook makes a comment about race, or a man says anything about gender issues.
And while Roman's new boss starts leaning toward doing more pro bono work, Roman's crisis of faith leads him in the other direction, towards changing his lifestyle by cashing in. He anonymously collects the reward money related to a case he worked on, without realizing that doing this violates attorney-client privilege. (Or maybe he does realize, this is also a bit unclear.) Finally he can afford a nicer apartment, better suits and treats himself to a night in a fancy hotel, complete with bacon-maple donuts on the beach.
That's hardly the end of the story, because Roman's actions eventually start to catch up with him. He's also working on a class-action suit that's related to plea bargaining reform, because it turns out that the whole plea system is not fair to everyone, because it means that the vast majority of people are not getting their day in court, which they should be entitled to. But this is a case that could make a lawyer's career, and it would demand that he seek help and spend years walking this through the legal system. Despite watching countless episodes of "Law & Order", I'm nothing close to a legal expert, so I don't fully understand all of the concepts here - the only thing I can imagine is that Roman's brief is like a screenplay that is very ambitious and would take years to develop and produce into a film.
Similarly, the only way for me to understand the differences between a small law office and a larger law firm is to think about my experiences working for animation studios - I've been working for very small studios (1-5 employees) for a very long time. If I were out of work, I could look for employment at a larger studio, but I'm not sure if I'd fit in there. I'm used to being a sort of jack-of-all-trades, juggling many tasks at once and getting involved in many different aspects of production, from typing screenplays to entering film festivals and arranging screenings, doing accounting and payroll, running and fulfilling Kickstarter campaigns and promoting things on social media. At a larger company I might get assigned ONE of those tasks, and that would be it, just doing that one thing, all day long, day after day. I might be inclined to jump out the window on my third day.
In that sense, I think I can see where Roman Israel is coming from - he's been pulled out of his comfort zone, forced to change his whole approach to practicing law and worse, he can't maintain his old routines. Suddenly his suits aren't good enough, he's got to get a haircut, and he's got to interact with strangers. All I can say is, "Roman, I feel your pain." It's much harder to fight the good fight when you've been thrown off your game.
Also starring Colin Farrell (last seen in "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them"), Carmen Ejogo (ditto), Amari Cheatom (last seen in "Django Unchained"), DeRon Horton, Amanda Warren (last seen in "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri"), Nazneen Contractor (last seen in "Star Trek: Into Darkness"), Shelley Hennig, Joseph David-Jones, Andrew T. Lee, Hugo Armstrong, Tony Plana (last seen in "Hard Time: Hostage Hotel"), Sam Gilroy, Lynda Gravatt, Niles Fitch (last seen in "St. Vincent"), Elisa Perry, Annie Sertich, Franco Vega, Lauren Ellen Thompson.
RATING: 6 out of 10 jars of peanut butter
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