Increasingly, I’m only going to do what I want to do, professionally. So I don’t know what I’m going to do next. How can I be the best that I can be? And what interests me? Where’s the new territory?
Despite a very strong performance, Denzel Washington’s latest effort falters
Denzel Washington,
We’ve all seen vanity projects: John Travolta in Battlefield Earth; Will and Jaden Smith in After Earth; Kevin Costner in The Postman, a.k.a. the last mailman on Earth. Roman J. Israel, Esq., despite its highfalutin title, is a Hollywood oddity — the anti-vanity project.
Denzel Washington, currently poised between playing guntoting heroes in Antoine Fuqua’s The Magnificent Seven remake and his Equalizer sequel, and still riding high on three Oscar nominations (plus one win) for Fences, which he directed, produced and starred in, has taken time out of his busy career to play a dowdy, overweight, gap-toothed defence attorney, lacking in people skills and draped in a wardrobe, eyeglasses, headphones and haircut that would have looked seriously out of date in 1990. With a logical mind and an eidetic memory — it’s hinted that he might be on the spectrum — Roman has for years toiled as a kind of human computer in a two-man firm. But when his boss has a heart attack, he’s left to fend for himself, and eventually winds up working for George Pierce (Colin Farrell), a real oil slick of a lawyer who’s been called in to close up the small firm.
Credit must go to writerdirector Dan Gilroy, whose last feature, 2014’s Nightcrawler, was Oscar-nominated for its original screenplay and included a tourde-force performance from Jake Gyllenhaal as a crooked crime videographer. You think you know the George Pierce type, but he’ll surprise you. When he sees the kind of customer loyalty (and referrals) generated by Roman’s hands-on approach to business, he tells the rest of his employees to follow suit, and also decides to do some pro bono work. And he ups the firm’s fees — no harm in making record profits while doing good, right?
Roman is also a difficult card to read. Previously content to stand and eat peanut butter sandwiches for dinner in his rundown apartment, Roman comes into some money and starts living the high life. At the same time, he makes one ethical choice that will set said life on a collision course with retribution, and possibly ruin. “Each one of us is greater than the worst thing we’ve ever done,” he says early in the movie. That may be true, but his worst thing is a lulu.
Washington is fantastic in the role. For the first time since The Hurricane, I was able to forget I was watching the star, and could relax and watch the character. Roman uses the “esquire” appellation as a “title of dignity,” and you can see him trying to be dignified in all things, even if we mostly witness his good intentions going awry. For instance, an attempt at simple chivalry while speaking to a civil-rights organization turns into such a shouting match he’s forced to leave, though not before catching the eye of Maya (Carmen Ejogo), the group’s idealistic leader.
It’s yet another testament to Gilroy’s writing that I could have spent more time with both Farrell’s and Ejogo’s characters, so intricately and realistically are they drawn. Maya in particular is a revelation. We’re never quite sure if she views Roman as a father figure or possible love interest.
And yet the movie ultimately disappoints. Perhaps it’s in the pacing: It went through substantial re-edits after its première. The version I saw had some sudden jumps in plot. Or maybe it’s Roman himself: Some of his choices come off as capricious, crafted merely to move action forward.
Were the whole project less well written or more sloppily performed, such lapses might be less noticeable. Thus is Washington’s (and Gilroy’s) newest project a victim of its own success. Anti-vanity, thy name is Roman.