Denzel Washington’s activist lawyer finds himself in a jam Grieving mother bent on justice for daughter
By the time a movie star of verifiable acting ability has been around for a few decades, you start seeing interviews like the one, recently, in which George Clooney mentioned quitting acting at least until something like Paul Newman’s role in “The Verdict” comes along. That film has become an industry veteran touchstone. Legal dramas featuring a flawed but nobly wily protagonist: These are catnip for maturing male beauties eager to remind audiences they can A) carry a character-driven project, and B) quit coasting on their charm, or their ability to pretend to kill people, for a couple of hours.
In his 40s, Clooney took on such a role in writerdirector Tony Gilroy’s “Michael Clayton.” Now, Denzel Washington has done the same, as the consciously unsmooth operator in nearly every shot of the flamboyant performance showcase “Roman J. Israel, Esq.,” written and directed by Dan Gilroy, Tony’s brother.
Gilroy wrote the part for Washington. A “bit of a savant” is how one character describes Roman’s personality and compulsive behavior. For 26 years, this brilliant but socially maladroit activist has worked in the LA law office of a well-known criminal defense attorney. His boss’s death pushes Roman into the public light, and it’s clear this throwback in the ill-fitting suit and retro Afro has no taste or tolerance for the grinding compromises of the criminal justice system.
In a condescending spirit of pity, Roman’s hired on by hotshot attorney George Pierce, played by Colin Farrell. The instigating MPAA rating: Running time: Opens: conflict in “Roman J. Israel, Esq.” comes from Roman’s unsanctioned handling of a case involving a young man wrongly accused of murder. Without giving it away — there’s a genuinely effective twist involving the identity of a new client — Roman breaks the law, comes into some money and spends the rest of the film reckoning with that decision. We’re set up for all this in an early throwaway line of Roman’s, inspired by reallife Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson: “Each one of us is greater than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”
As a writer, Gilroy hits about .500 for individual scenes, a believable one followed by an artificial construct. Early on, Roman explains the “esquire” designation to signify a standing “slightly above ‘gentleman,’ below ‘knight.’” This is on-thenose stuff. Roman meets a valiant civil rights activist, (Carmen Ejogo, of “Selma”), who invites him to a meeting of protesters, and it quickly goes south, with Roman getting upbraided by two young women for his old-school manners. It’s not a short scene, but it peaks just when it gets interesting. The movie lacks key progressions and transitions, especially in its middle section. “Roman J. Israel, Esq.” is a morality tale primarily about a good, sympathetic mess of a Don Quixote who screws up. Secondarily, it’s about the Farrell character’s change of heart, brought about by the idealist in his midst. The two men’s crisscrossing transformations never quite convince.
It’s frustrating, because the actors are all excellent and the movie’s actually trying to speak to the audience’s better instincts about what makes a grown-up movie protagonist worthwhile. Clearly with his star’s input, Gilroy invents a flurry of character tics and eccentricities. Still, you stick with it, or a lot of it. Even when the movie loses its way narratively, Washington’s in there, slugging, building a living, breathing character out of Gilroy’s knighterrant.
Michael Phillips is the Chicago Tribune film critic.
No one in contemporary movies delivers the sideeye — the withering, nonverbal judgment of the righteous — the way Frances McDormand delivers it in “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.” Sometimes it’s funny, because whoever she’s playing is so much sharper than whoever she’s acting opposite. Other times, it’s more of a look of pity or quiet resignation. This is what I have to deal with.
The film is writer-director Martin McDonagh’s third feature, and all three are driven by violence, retribution and bizarrely funny banter. McDormand gives the movie a core of seriousness as Mildred, a woman mired in grief over the unsolved abduction, rape and murder of her daughter. This we don’t see; hearing about it is bad enough. The story begins seven months later. Using three dilapidated old billboards away from the main highway, Mildred, who works at a local gift store called Southern Charms, calls out the genial police chief, Willoughby (Woody Harrelson), by name. In a defiantly public way, she urges Ebbing law enforcement to solve the murder and deliver a bereft mother some peace.
From this setup, McDonagh sets a series of tit-for-tat revenge ploys into motion. Divorced from her abusive ex (John Hawkes) and raising their high school-age son (Lucas Hedges), Mildred is encouraged and soon threatened to take down the billboards by Willoughby and his racist, thuggish deputy, Dixon (Sam Rockwell). Like a darker version of a Laurel and Hardy short, “Three Billboards” raises the stakes as it goes. MPAA rating: Running time: Opens: Dixon tosses the young billboard advertising manager (Caleb Landry Jones) out a second-story window. Mildred torches the police station. Peter Dinklage plays an Ebbing outsider sweet on Mildred. Rather too neatly, McDonagh establishes the narrative as the marginalized, the people of color and the woman of rage against the emblems of the white male patriarchy, Dogpatch division.
For a while it’s engaging but pretty thin. Then it gets more interesting, especially for the actors. McDonagh reveals the Harrelson and Rockwell characters to be more complicated than expected, and the exceptional ensemble works wonders to flesh out the people doing the avenging, so that it’s not just plot machinery and stick figures.
Shooting in western South Carolina, McDonagh creates a vision of small-town Southern America that’s half mythology, half reality. McDonagh came to fame by way of the theater; the first play of his to reach America, “The Beauty Queen of Leenane,” was extremely high-grade pulp. On Broadway it had people screaming as well as laughing at its depiction of terrible human behavior in remote, forbidding Connemara, Ireland.
In “Three Billboards,” we’re not far spiritually from the lawless, vigilante Wild West that McDonagh drew upon for his Irish plays. In an interview at the Venice Film Festival this year, McDormand said her chief inspiration for Mildred was John Wayne. McDormand excels, even if her character’s steely resolve threatens to become a cliche. It’s Rockwell who gets the plum here. Dixon’s a mama’s boy with a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other. By the end of “Three Billboards,” without giving too much away, McDormand and Rockwell are on the verge of an all-American sequel to McDonagh’s droll first feature, “In Bruges,” the one about the hit men hiding out in Belgium.
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.