Maybe a New Life For McConaughey

Matthew McConaughey has played variations on the bronzed shirtless man-child in mediocre rom-coms for what seems like decades. Now, in a fine career move, he has channeled his smooth charm, pearly white teeth and honeyed twang into a semi-shady defense lawyer, Mick Haller, in the entertaining new courtroom thriller, “The Lincoln Lawyer.” Haller is a showman who works out of the back seat of his luxurious Lincoln Town Car — a logical move since most of his clients can be most easily found on the street. He can squeeze money from clients ranging from drug-dealing motorcycle gangsters to upper-crust snobs with equal brio, and ensures everything is arranged to his liking with the liberal use of bribes. When he’s hired by the young scion of a fearsomely confident real estate tycoon, his eyes register dollar signs like characters in a Warner Brothers cartoon. His client, Louis Roulet (Ryan Phillippe), insists he’s innocent of the brutal beating of a prostitute he picked up in a bar. It’s not much of a spoiler to say that Haller quickly figures out that Roulet is lying — the suspense isn’t in whether Roulet is guilty, but how Haller can do his legal duty by his client and still make sure he’s punished for his crime. Assaulted by the usual criticism of defense lawyers everywhere, along the lines of “How can you sleep at night knowing you got that dirtbag back on the street?” Haller takes pleasure in outwitting self-righteous prosecutors. But though he tries to hide it behind his slick moves, Haller actually believes in the justice system. He is in agony when he realizes he gave a previous client short shrift and convinced him to take a plea, admitting to a murder in order to get a life sentence instead of the death penalty. Director Brad Furman seems to mistrust, now and then, that his story is exciting on its own. He pumps up the tension artificially with super-tight closeups and extra-jittery handheld cameras. But most of the time he backs off enough to let McConaughey and his very juicy supporting cast move the complicated plot forward at a satisfying clip. William H. Macy, who now looks like nothing so much as a Pekingese — huge eyes in a scrunched-up wrinkly face, with a shock of hair spilling over his forehead — is Haller’s investigator. Phillipe is chilling as Roulet, born with a silver spoon and a streak of sociopathy a mile wide. Michael Peña is particuarly fine as the earlier client, first seen in flashback as a sweet young guy terrified of being railroaded, but later, when Haller visits him in jail, the man has been transformed by prison into a dead-eyed lifer. Marisa Tomei makes the best of a slightly less underwritten character than the usual wife-girlfriend. As Maggie, Haller’s ex-wife and occasional courtroom adversary, she looks her age. And beautifully. (Tomei is 46, which is about 101 in Hollywood-leading-lady years). Maggie exists in the story only to show additional facets of Mick’s character — loving dad, regretful ex-husband — rather than to move the plot forward. And to give McConaughey a chance to, yes, take his shirt off. But when he’s clothed, McConaughey does his best work in years, effortlessly assuming the well-worn mantle of lawyer-anti-hero. Whether his legal strategy would hold water (in a phrase cribbed from another great courtroom movie, also featuring Tomei, “My Cousin Vinny”) is not for me to say. But if “The Lincoln Lawyer” becomes a franchise, a venerable old movie genre and a long-in-the-tooth pretty boy may both find new life. “The Lincoln Lawyer” is playing at The Moviehouse in Millerton, NY. It is rated R for some violence, sexual content and language.