There are plenty of criminals who get either arrested and convicted or slip through the cracks of our ultimately flawed judicial system. One of the main people who helps determine if a person will get a years-long sentence or merely a slap on the hand with probation is their own defense lawyer. Matthew McConaughey plays one of those people, defense attorney Mick Haller in Brad Furman's new film The Lincoln Lawyer.
The most unique thing about McConaughey is that where most actors try to dig into a place hidden inside of them to tap into a lawyer role like this, he doesn't have to do too much work on that end. After all, for a good chunk of time in his youth McConaughey was studying to become a lawyer. However, once he skimmed through the amount of time it would take for him to finally leap out into the field, he thought of other options. "I'll be 28 by the time I'll get out, actually implement and put an imprint in society and I didn't like that. I didn't want to miss my 20s," confessed McConaughey at the LA press day for the Lionsgate Films release.
That certainly was a wise move for McConaughey since now he's become a huge star in his own right. He hasn't lost his passion for the law, which is one of the main reasons why he found himself immediately attracted to John Romano's evenly paced script. McConaughey always found himself on the move reading through it, which is the kind of pace he admits lawyers always have in them.
"That's something true these guys that do what they do," said McConaughey. "They don't stop, everything is moving. They have a dexterity that's always on the move." And even though his character Mick Haller is always on the move in the movie, one of the things he admired about him was his own take on the judicial system game.
"This guy plays the game very well and knows the system. He's on the side of defending the people that can't defend themselves, that underbelly of society, but he knows the game. He knows the system and his challenge is to make the system work...and make the system work for him while not letting the system know that they're working for him."
Speaking of things that work, one of the highlights in The Lincoln Lawyer has to be the overall tension you feel between Mick Haller (McConaughey) and his client, Louis Roulete (Ryan Phillippe). With the way the two of them work together on screen, you figure that they had a lot of rehearsal time, correct? But that's not exactly the case this time around.
You would think it's Brad Furman who made that overall decision to not let Phillippe and McConaughey rehearse, but you'd be wrong there. "We're both kind of playing each other throughout the thing," explained McConaughey. "I didn't want to know or even have an idea of what his hand may be, and I sure as hell didn't want to share with him what mine was. So I was just like, 'Look, I've got my guy down and you have your guy down. Let's meet when we're in this scene. Let's meet each other there and go on this two month fun journey getting to know each other through our characters.'"
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The Lincoln Lawyer hits theaters on March 18, 2010 and is rated R for some violence, sexual content and language.