Thursday, October 13, 2011
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Source Code (2011) 720p PPV – 575MB
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0945513/
Code: |
Colter Stevens an American Army helicopter pilot whose last memory is flying in Afghanistan, wakes up on a commuter train. But he discovers he has assumed the identity of another man. 8 minutes later the train explodes and Stevens finds himself in some kind of pod. He then talks to someone named Goodwin who tells him he has to go back and find who the bomber is. He is sent back and is going through the whole thing again and tries to find who the bomber is but fails and the bomb goes off and he is back in the pod. He is sent back again and still can’t find out anything. When he comes back he asks what is going on, Goodwin and Rutledge, the scientist in charge tells him he is part of a project that can put someone in another person’s consciousness during the last 8 minutes of their life. Stevens says why doesn’t he just stop the bomb, he is then told that he is not going back in time but placed in the moment so he can find out who the bomber is and if there are any other targets…
Download
Rio (2011) 720p – 600MB
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1436562/
[FORMAT]:…………………..[ MatroskaDownload |
Ironclad (2011) 720p – 750MB
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1233301/
[FORMAT]:…………………..[ Matroska |
JIt is the year 1215 and the rebel barons of England have forced their despised King John to put his royal seal to the Magna Carta, a noble, seminal document that upheld the rights of free-men. Yet within months of pledging himself to the great charter, the King reneged on his word and assembled a mercenary army on the south coast of England with the intention of bringing the barons and the country back under his tyrannical rule. Barring his way stood the mighty Rochester castle, a place that would become the symbol of the rebel’s momentous struggle for justice and freedom.
http://tinypaste.com/9fa63
Friday, July 8, 2011
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Sunday, July 3, 2011
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Beautiful Lies (2010)
Beautiful Lies
De vrais mensonges
(France)
A Pathe Distribution release of a Les Films Pelleas, TF1 Films Prod., Tovo Films production, in association with Sofica Coficup, Un Fonds Backup Films, Cinemage, with participation of Canal Plus, CinemaCinema. (International sales: Wild Bunch, Paris.) Produced by Philippe Martin. Directed by Pierre Salvadori. Screenplay, Salvadori, Benoit Graffin.
With: Audrey Tautou, Nathalie Baye, Sami Bouajila, Stephanie Lagarde, Judith Chemla, Cecile Boland, Didier Brice, Daniel Duval.
When a mom and her daughter fall for the same guy, the result is plenty of ooh-la-las but few actual laughs in Gallic helmer Pierre Salvadori's tried-and-tested romantic comedy, "Beautiful Lies." Despite a cast toplined by Audrey Tautou (who, as if to incite further mispronunciation of her name, sports a large tattoo on her neck), this long-winded assembly of quid pro quos and borderline sexist banter goes only to the most predictable places. Salvadori ("Priceless") has fared much, much better with such farcical material in the past, and the pic may perform below expectations before rebounding on the French tube. Provincial hairdresser Emilie (Tautou), not to be mistaken for Amelie, runs her beauty parlor with an iron fist, especially when it comes to dealing with hunky Arab handyman Jean (Sami Bouajila). When she finds out Jean is an overeducated translator who speaks at least five languages, this infuriates her to the point that she fires him. (Why she does this is never entirely clear, though she seems to have a major inferiority complex when it comes to intelligent men.) Little does Emilie know (or perhaps she doesn't want to know) that Jean is madly in love with her. When he sends her an anonymous letter at the start of the film, she tosses it in the garbage, then decides to fish it out, copy it over and mail it to her depressed, recently dumped mom, Maddy (Nathalie Baye), a woman so starved for a man that she wanders the streets in a bathrobe looking for the letter's author.
Maddy eventually stumbles upon Jean, and the ensuing confusion, which lasts at least a full hour, leads to lots of deadweight jokes involving Mom's relentless sex drive. Soon enough, Emilie's own feelings for Jean awaken, and the two ladies, easily 30 years apart, are thrown into a veritable mommy-daughter showdown in which Emilie's "true lies" (as the original title explains) come back to haunt her.
Surely such a tale could take place only in France, and the morality of sleeping with your mom's boyfriend hardly comes into play here. Instead, Salvadori and regular co-scribe Benoit Graffin focus on the war between Emilie's suppressed libido and Maddy's oversized one, with the rather endearing Jean caught in between. In the end, he winds up being the pic's one redeemable character, which says a great deal about the filmmakers' view of their supposedly sweet-natured female protags.
Doing what they must with the script's vaudeville-style scenarios, Tautou and Baye can only go so far playing two women on estrogen overdrive. Bouajila ("Outside the Law") is more subdued, and Jean seems to watch the proceedings with a mix of horror and resignation. Supporting roles are often caricatures of small-town simplemindedness.
Standard tech package is highlighted by Emilie's garish and overlit hair salon.
Camera (color), Gilles Henry; editor, Isabelle Devinck; music, Philippe Eidel; production designer, Yves Fournier; costume designer, Virginie Montel; sound (Dolby Digital/DTS Digital), Michel Casang, Christophe Winding, Josefina Rodriguez, Joel Rangon; line producer, Marc Fontanel; assistant director, Alan Corno; casting, Alain Charbit. Reviewed at Pathe screening room, Paris, Dec. 1, 2010. Running time: 104 MIN.
Beautiful Lies (2010) 720p 750MB
[FORMAT]:…………………..[ Matroska
[iMDB RATING ]………………[ 7.4/10
[GENRE]:……………………[ Comedy | Romance
[FILE SIZE]:………………..[ 750 MB
[NO OF CDs]:………………..[ 1
[RESOLUTION]:……………….[ 1280*692
[ASPECT RATIO]:……………..[ 16/9
[FRAME RATE]:……………….[ 23.976 fps
[LANGUAGE ]:………………..[ French
[SUBTITLES]:………………..[ English (Muxed : Not hardsubbed : Can turn off)
[ORIGINAL RUNTIME]:………….[ 01:40:11
[RELEASE RUNTIME]:…………..[ 01:40:11
[SOURCE]:…………………..[ 720p
Download
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Movie Review: 127 Hours
There’s only so much you can do with a movie like 127 Hours. Director Danny Boyle does all of it, but in the end his film still hinges almost entirely on the performance of James Franco. Franco is an actor who, till now, always tried hard but never really achieved anything beyond mediocre results. An enthusiasm for acting, a willingness to take on challenging projects, and movie star good looks were always there, but talent? Until now I’d never really been sure. But in taking on the true life story of trapped climber Aron Ralston, Franco finds himself in the perfect place at the perfect time. It’s a role which. if played by someone else, might have just been the story of some guy trapped in a hole. Franco finds something more.
James Franco plays Ralston as a geek, and like all geeks he has an obsession. His obsession isn’t collecting Star Wars figurines or vintage comic books, his obsession is the outdoors. An engineer by profession Aron dreams of making his living as guide and when we meet him, he’s home from work and packing up for a weekend to be spent under the stars and sun, wandering endless, remote canyons all alone. He’s confident in his abilities, perhaps with good reason, and so he doesn’t bother to tell anyone where he’s going. Yet even an experienced hiker, his head packed full of survival knowledge, can’t prepare for everything.
The real life Aron Ralston’s story is well publicized, and by now it’s not a spoiler to tell you that before long he’ll end up trapped at the bottom of a canyon, pinned beneath a rock he can not move. Stuck there all alone for nearly a week, Aron will have plenty of time to think of everything he did wrong. The Swiss Army knife he failed to pack, the Gatorade bottle he left in his truck, the phone call from his mom he didn’t answer as he threw everything in his bag and hit the open road. Eventually he’ll have a choice to make. By the time he makes it, it’s almost not a choice, just a final desperate act to survive at any cost.
We spend a few brief moments with Aron, before he’s trapped, as he races across the wilderness on his bike. On his way out towards solitude he’ll encounter two pretty hikers. They’ll invite him to a Scooby Doo theme party, and fantasizing about what it might have been like if he’d shown up is one of the many things that’ll keep him going during his long imprisonment. Most of the movie is spent there with him, trapped beneath a rock, for 127 hours of solitude. The only thing on screen is Franco’s Ralston, with no one to talk to, nothing to do but sit and struggle and despair. Somehow, Ralston never gives in to panic; he’s too capable, too smart, too savvy for that. That doesn’t mean, however, he has a way out.
A lesser filmmaker would have blanched at the prospect of spending an entire movie in one place, with one character, and nothing to do but stare. At least in Cast Away Tom Hanks had an island to wander around and a beach ball to talk to. A lesser filmmaker would have panicked and cut away, perhaps to show us a rescue effort underway, or to fetishize his grieving family. Danny Boyle never does. He doesn’t need to, James Franco’s performance, sitting in that one spot, is that good.
Instead Boyle tries to find meaning in Ralston’s predicament. Aron sits and fantasizes about the choices he’s made and the people he loves. In more than one, feverish fantasy Ralston envisions himself freed and moving on. Some of these fantasy sequences are more successful than others. None of them are as good as the moments in which we simply sit with Franco, underneath that rock, and stare into the heavens looking for hope. None of those moments are as thrilling as his tiny triumphs of improvisation, his steely-eyed determination to find a way out, the minutiae of minute by minute life turned into grim life and death decisions. Much as he tries I’m not sure Boyle ever really finds that broader meaning he’s looking for. There’s some attempt to make a point about the way we’re all connected and how much we need each other, or to make a statement about the power of the human spirit. Some of that feels forced. It’s one man, in a hole, he does what must be done in order to survive, and that’s enough.
Franco’s best moments are almost entirely silent. The one that’ll stick with me, perhaps forever, comes after he’s finished the grisly, horrifying work of freeing himself. Aron stumbles back to survey what he’s done and for a moment, just a moment, there’s a smile. Standing there bleeding and dying, he steps back and grins, it’s the grin of someone who never thought he’d leave one spot and, no matter what happens from there on out knows he’s already won. His dirty, bloody, crooked smile in the face of unexpected freedom says everything there is to know about what’s happened and what matters most to Aron in those terrible moments. It’s a masterful performance by Franco, sharply directed with all the visual flair he can bring to bear on a single location by an unflinching Danny Boyle. 127 Hours is the kind of movie you absolutely must see once and then, battered and broken by enduring Ralston’s gruesome predicament with him, you’ll never want to see again.
Movie info: 127 Hours is the new film from Danny Boyle, the Academy Award winning director of 2008's Best Picture, Slumdog Millionaire. 127 Hours is the true story of mountain climber Aron Ralston's (James Franco) remarkable adventure to save himself after a fallen boulder crashes on his arm and traps him in an isolate canyon in Utah. Over the next five days Ralston examines his life and survives the elements to finally discover he has the courage and the wherewithal to extricate himself by any means necessary, scale a 65 foot wall and hike over eight miles before he is finally rescued. Throughout his journey, Ralston recalls friends, lovers (Clemence Poesy), family, and the last two people he ever had the chance to meet? A visceral thrilling story that will take an audience on a never before experienced journey and prove what we can do when we choose life.
Trailer HD 720p:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8GrX80Gxgo
Link Download
127 Hours (2010) 720p – 600MB
http://tinypaste.com/8dc4c
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Movie Review: Sucker Punch
Zack Snyder's action-fantasy epic is the proverbial noble failure.
March 24, 2011
by Moises Garcia
There are three worlds that the characters inhabit in this story, two of which are the products of Babydoll's imagination. The first is the heightened reality of the asylum, the second is the illusory high-class brothel where the girls "dance," and the final one is a no-holds-barred, steampunk fantasy realm where Babydoll and the girls battle everything from dragons and samurai to WWI bi-planes and robots. The heroines, like players in a video game, must seek and acquire the items that will make it possible for them to reach the next level and ultimately succeed.
A film commendable for its great ambition and visual imagination, Sucker Punch is nevertheless a huge disappointment and a colossal mess. It's a movie more interested in spectacle and coolness than in narrative or even comprehension. Its sketchy story breaks down as such: Act One is a music video, Act Two is a video game, and Act Three actually tries to finally be a plot-driven movie, but by that point – if you haven't walked out by then, and there will undoubtedly be plenty of those – it's too late for you to care about any of the characters or what happens next.
Sucker Punch is like a story that would have been written by a teenage fanboy who spent his night sucking down Red Bulls while playing video games only to realize that he has a creative writing assignment due the next morning. So he stays up all night belting it out, culling from not just the game he'd been playing, but also from the movies in his Netflix queue (most likely Inception, Shutter Island, The Last Airbender and Charlie's Angels). Unfortunately, Snyder's ambition here as a screenwriter (he co-wrote the script with Steve Shibuya, based on Snyder's story) far exceeds his mastery of that particular craft. (And for a movie that's superficially about female empowerment, it's ironically one of the most ridiculously misogynistic movies in recent memory.)
There's hardly any dialogue at first as the movie starts as a full-on music video set in the 1960s. The songs used here, like some of those in Snyder's Watchmen, are just too obvious and cliche. (Seriously, there needs to be a moratorium on the use of "White Rabbit" in mind-bender movies.) Once Babydoll enters the third, more fantastical realm, the film becomes a (bad) video game. It's all eye candy, and never once do you feel like any of the characters are in any true danger of being hurt by their foes. (Maybe they'll just go deaf from the wall-to-wall loud music.)
Indeed, it takes until almost the end of the second act before you feel like these characters can even be touched, let alone harmed. Once that does happen, the danger does become very real, but sadly by then you've already stopped giving a damn (if you ever did to begin with). Zack Snyder at least deserves kudos for not pulling his punch (no pun intended) during the film's bleak homestretch (although I wish I'd been spared the dopey "wisdom" provided by the film's opening and closing narration).
As for the performances, Browning is amazingly wooden as Babydoll, wearing the same wide-eyed, dull expression and using the same flat delivery throughout the whole film. Cornish fares a bit better as Sweetpea, while Malone probably comes off the best as Rocket. Hudgens as Blondie and Chung as Amber really don't have much more to do than to look sexy. The usually reliable Gugino uses a Russian accent here that's borderline campy; she sounds like she's in a Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon. Isaac makes for a dashing bastard when playing Blue the pimp and as a sleazy freak when he's an orderly. Hamm's role is regrettably brief; he seems to have been cast simply because he's so associated with the era in which the film is set. Scott Glenn appears in a Wise Man-mentor role that comes across as an odd combination of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Caine from Kung Fu and Morgan Freeman.
Visually, Snyder has crafted yet another visceral feast for the eyes, but almost every fantasy movie looks good nowadays. In the age of ubiquitous CGI, do "cool visuals" still have enough pull to warrant recommending a fanboy-friendly movie? No, they don't and especially when there are video games whose visuals are just as cool and boast better stories to boot.
Sucker Punch isn't an awful movie, but it comes perilously close to being one (and will likely be a frontrunner at next year's Razzies). It conjures up an abundance of great visuals, but lacks the soul, smarts and the suspense to help compensate for its barebones plot. It all amounts to an epic "so what?," and doesn't make the viewer feel much of anything except bewildered by its single-minded devotion to be the "coolest" movie ever.
Sucker Punch (2011) 1080p Extended – 1.6GB and 720p Extended – 825MB
DownloadMovie Review: Tangled (2011)
The latest animated 3-D Disney movie Tangled isn’t as dryly subversive as one of those great old “Fractured Fairy Tales” on Rocky and Bullwinkle, but it has a similar vibe—of people goofing on the Brothers Grimm and having a jolly time. The fairy tale in this case is “Rapunzel,” the heroine (voiced by Mandy Moore) a princess shut up in the high tower of a castle by a bogus mother (Donna Murphy) who stole her as an infant for the rejuvenating power of her long tresses. It’s a full-scale musical, too. Early on, Rapunzel sings a ditty called “When Will My Life Begin?” that recounts how she spends her days and nights, and though it’s awfully sprightly for a lifelong shut-in, Moore has a supple voice, the staging is amusing, and the tune (by Alan Menken) is catchy. Rapunzel has a little chameleon named Pascal with huge eyes that perches on her shoulders and gets a few good reaction shots. I can’t help liking a movie with chameleon reaction shots.
Her prince is an egotistical bandit who calls himself Flynn Rider (Zachary Levi), and he climbs into her window to escape a vigilant horse he stole that turned around and came after him. (I can’t help liking a movie in which a man is pursued by a horse.) By and by, Flynn and Rapunzel end up in a tavern full of slobbering giants and grotesques who first seem threatening but then show their sunnier sides. They sing a song called “I’ve Got a Dream” that rhymes “femurs” and “dreamers” and has a line that goes, “I’ve got scars and lumps and bruises/plus something here that oozes.” Very nice.
Tangled is no big deal, but it’s nowhere near as hard on the eyes as the Shrek movies, and it’s full of felicitous touches. (Pixar’s John Lasseter was an executive producer.) In a film in which there’s only one real villain, it’s good that she’s voiced by Murphy, who’s Broadway’s gift to animated movies. In one scene, the faux-mother becomes distraught at Rapunzel’s “unreasonable” demand to be let out of her tower, and Murphy puts a world of righteous indignation into the movie’s best line: “Oh, so I’m the bad guy now?” Well, uh, yes, you are—and you’re going to get a comeuppance that’s worthy of you. Relax and enjoy.
Link download : Tangled (2010) 720p – 650MB – scOrp
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Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Movie Review: The Lincoln Lawyer (2011)
What happened — did Matthew McConaughey roll out of bed one morning and decide that, after smiling through one too many schlocky movies, playing the pretty boy opposite Sandra-Kate-Jennifer, he wanted to do something decent? Not great, mind you, just solid and satisfying, a movie that asked more of him than rock-hard abs and bleachy-white teeth, one with a touch of grit, a story to chew over and maybe even a beautiful woman who looks real, something like his latest, “The Lincoln Lawyer.”
More About This Movie
The woman is Marisa Tomei, one of the few higher-profile American actresses in her age group (she was born in 1964, five years before Mr. McConaughey) who’s actually allowed to act her age, who conveys intelligence and sexiness, and suggests a life that’s been lived and without a face frozen by filler and fear. In “The Lincoln Lawyer,” a thriller adroitly adapted from the Michael Connelly book of the same title — directed by Brad Furman and written by John Romano — Ms. Tomei plays a character and not just the love interest. She isn’t the star, of course, but without her and the other exceptionally well-cast supporting players, Mr. McConaughey would have a tougher time making you believe that he was to the sleaze born.
But, oh, look at him go — no, cut through the waters — slicing through the crowds at this and that Los Angeles-area courthouse, a shark in gray suit and loafers. As Mick Haller (Mickey in the books), Mr. McConaughey keeps his focus tight — Mr. Furman making sure his camera does the same — doling out empty smiles to the guys with the badges and going straight for the clients whose innocence matters less than their wads of cash. Mick (the hard, short syllable suits him) works out of the back seat of his chauffeured Lincoln Town Car, an itinerant office, good for the rootless. It’s a portable refuge, as much a hideaway as an expression of the man who owns it: sleek, hard, fast and shut off from the world sprawling outside it.
Mr. Furman gives “The Lincoln Lawyer” the unpretty look it deserves, turning down the Southern California light so he can throw in some shadows. Save for a golf course where the moneyed hit balls oceanside and a high-ticket office with the usual mausoleum marble, the locations are often homey, sometimes downright homely, textured rather than slicked up. Mick has a killer view from his barely lived-in house in the hills, but he and the movie scarcely seem to notice. Mr. Furman, who made a no-profile feature debut in 2008 with “The Take,” even offers up another look at downtown Los Angeles, that overexposed movie set, peering behind its towers to where palm trees sway next to tangles of freeway.
The story, and there’s a lot of it, nicely condensed from Mr. Connelly’s page-turner best seller, largely turns on a case that looks like a slam dunk or, as one of Mick’s bail bondsmen, Val (John Leguizamo), insists, a jackpot. A man (Ryan Phillippe) did or did not beat up a woman, and his Beverly Hills grizzly mama (Frances Fisher) has the right get-out-of-jail card: a fat bank account. The client, Louis Roulet, insists on his innocence, and Mick takes the bait and the money (the same thing). Complications ensue. Mick works the case and chases leads, helped by an investigator (William H. Macy) and dogged by cops with grudges (Bryan Cranston and Michael Paré). Everything looks pretty clear-cut until it doesn’t.
Mr. Connelly, a crime reporter turned writer, spun Mick off his author’s popular series about a Los Angeles police detective by the name of Hieronymous Bosch, Harry for short. Though related to dodgy cinematic lawyers like the antiheroes from films like “The Verdict,” Mick doesn’t feel as if he were being readied for his big redemption. He has a likable ex-wife (Ms. Tomei, as a prosecutor), a young daughter who loves him and even friends. (They all seem to be on the payroll.) But Mr. Connelly doesn’t try to make us love the character, and neither does Mr. Furman. He exploits Mr. McConaughey’s facile charm, pulling us into Mick’s gravitational field, where he first counts the cash and then tries to do good. The cash is the easy part.
There are modest pleasures in a familiar story told differently enough that you’re happy to keep guessing and watching, despite this one’s five-ending pileup of a finish. Mr. Connelly was inspired by Raymond Chandler, and it shows in Mick’s jaded rap, and it’s likely that Mr. Furman watched Steven Soderbergh’s “Out of Sight.” “The Lincoln Lawyer” doesn’t approach those heights. But these are first-rate influences, and there’s much to like in how those inspirations have been absorbed, including the wrung-out life that Mr. McConaughey summons up and the sight of Michael Peña, as one of Mick’s old clients, going from freaked-out innocent to stone-cold lifer in a few short scenes. This is an agreeably nasty tale about a corrupt lawyer working all the angles, including, it’s safe to assume, a possible movie franchise.
“The Lincoln Lawyer” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Gunplay involving human and animal victims, and extreme violence against women.
THE LINCOLN LAWYER
Opens on Friday nationwide.
Directed by Brad Furman; written by John Romano, based on the novel by Michael Connelly; director of photography, Lukas Ettlin; edited by Jeff McEvoy; production design by Charisse Cardenas; costumes by Erin Benach; produced by Tom Rosenberg, Gary Lucchesi, Sidney Kimmel, Richard Wright and Scott Steindorff; released by Lionsgate. Running time: 1 hour 59 minutes.
WITH: Matthew McConaughey (Mick Haller), Ryan Phillippe (Louis Roulet), Marisa Tomei (Maggie McPherson), William H. Macy (Frank Levin), Josh Lucas (Ted Minton), Frances Fisher (Mary Windsor), John Leguizamo (Val Valenzuela), Michael Peña (Jesus Martinez), Bryan Cranston (Detective Lankford) and Michael Paré (Detective Kurlen).
But, oh, look at him go — no, cut through the waters — slicing through the crowds at this and that Los Angeles-area courthouse, a shark in gray suit and loafers. As Mick Haller (Mickey in the books), Mr. McConaughey keeps his focus tight — Mr. Furman making sure his camera does the same — doling out empty smiles to the guys with the badges and going straight for the clients whose innocence matters less than their wads of cash. Mick (the hard, short syllable suits him) works out of the back seat of his chauffeured Lincoln Town Car, an itinerant office, good for the rootless. It’s a portable refuge, as much a hideaway as an expression of the man who owns it: sleek, hard, fast and shut off from the world sprawling outside it.
Mr. Furman gives “The Lincoln Lawyer” the unpretty look it deserves, turning down the Southern California light so he can throw in some shadows. Save for a golf course where the moneyed hit balls oceanside and a high-ticket office with the usual mausoleum marble, the locations are often homey, sometimes downright homely, textured rather than slicked up. Mick has a killer view from his barely lived-in house in the hills, but he and the movie scarcely seem to notice. Mr. Furman, who made a no-profile feature debut in 2008 with “The Take,” even offers up another look at downtown Los Angeles, that overexposed movie set, peering behind its towers to where palm trees sway next to tangles of freeway.
The story, and there’s a lot of it, nicely condensed from Mr. Connelly’s page-turner best seller, largely turns on a case that looks like a slam dunk or, as one of Mick’s bail bondsmen, Val (John Leguizamo), insists, a jackpot. A man (Ryan Phillippe) did or did not beat up a woman, and his Beverly Hills grizzly mama (Frances Fisher) has the right get-out-of-jail card: a fat bank account. The client, Louis Roulet, insists on his innocence, and Mick takes the bait and the money (the same thing). Complications ensue. Mick works the case and chases leads, helped by an investigator (William H. Macy) and dogged by cops with grudges (Bryan Cranston and Michael Paré). Everything looks pretty clear-cut until it doesn’t.
Mr. Connelly, a crime reporter turned writer, spun Mick off his author’s popular series about a Los Angeles police detective by the name of Hieronymous Bosch, Harry for short. Though related to dodgy cinematic lawyers like the antiheroes from films like “The Verdict,” Mick doesn’t feel as if he were being readied for his big redemption. He has a likable ex-wife (Ms. Tomei, as a prosecutor), a young daughter who loves him and even friends. (They all seem to be on the payroll.) But Mr. Connelly doesn’t try to make us love the character, and neither does Mr. Furman. He exploits Mr. McConaughey’s facile charm, pulling us into Mick’s gravitational field, where he first counts the cash and then tries to do good. The cash is the easy part.
There are modest pleasures in a familiar story told differently enough that you’re happy to keep guessing and watching, despite this one’s five-ending pileup of a finish. Mr. Connelly was inspired by Raymond Chandler, and it shows in Mick’s jaded rap, and it’s likely that Mr. Furman watched Steven Soderbergh’s “Out of Sight.” “The Lincoln Lawyer” doesn’t approach those heights. But these are first-rate influences, and there’s much to like in how those inspirations have been absorbed, including the wrung-out life that Mr. McConaughey summons up and the sight of Michael Peña, as one of Mick’s old clients, going from freaked-out innocent to stone-cold lifer in a few short scenes. This is an agreeably nasty tale about a corrupt lawyer working all the angles, including, it’s safe to assume, a possible movie franchise.
“The Lincoln Lawyer” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Gunplay involving human and animal victims, and extreme violence against women.
THE LINCOLN LAWYER
Opens on Friday nationwide.
Directed by Brad Furman; written by John Romano, based on the novel by Michael Connelly; director of photography, Lukas Ettlin; edited by Jeff McEvoy; production design by Charisse Cardenas; costumes by Erin Benach; produced by Tom Rosenberg, Gary Lucchesi, Sidney Kimmel, Richard Wright and Scott Steindorff; released by Lionsgate. Running time: 1 hour 59 minutes.
WITH: Matthew McConaughey (Mick Haller), Ryan Phillippe (Louis Roulet), Marisa Tomei (Maggie McPherson), William H. Macy (Frank Levin), Josh Lucas (Ted Minton), Frances Fisher (Mary Windsor), John Leguizamo (Val Valenzuela), Michael Peña (Jesus Martinez), Bryan Cranston (Detective Lankford) and Michael Paré (Detective Kurlen).
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