An average movie

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since I have a weak spot for Denzel Washington, I was quite eager to check it out. Well, it turned out to be one of the most intriguing characters played by Washington and the guy delivered one of his best performances here. Unfortunately, it seems that Dan Gilroy eventually didn’t really know what to do with this complex character. It had to do with some insignificant details like the fact that the guy didn’t have a computer system to manage his law cases or even used emails to communicate but was still able to manage an iPod with 8000 songs. In fact, Roman J. Israel must be the first man on Earth able to order a Uber without even owning a smartphone. But it went further than this as the makers never knew if they should portray the guy as some naïve clueless loser or as some kind of genius visionary. As a result, the interactions of the other characters with this man never really made sense. For example, why was Maya so impressed by him? Colin Farrell’s character was even worse though. Indeed, while Farrell did the best he could with this material, within a few weeks, he hired Roman J. Israel to make a quick buck, then threatened to fire him and then, out of nowhere, turned him into the next great hope of his law firm? Concerning the story itself, once again, it wasn’t really convincing either, I’m afraid. Basically, at some point, Roman J. Israel made a massive U turn completely out of character but, then, they cancelled his new behaviour within 20 mins which made the whole U turn rather pointless. Anyway, to conclude, even if the movie itself wasn’t really strong, Denzel Washington was always quite spellbinding to behold and, only for his performance, it is still worth a look to watch the damned thing.