By Emilio Frenk.
Director: Dan Gilroy
Cast: Denzel Washington, Colin Farrell, Carmen Ejogo, Amari Cheatom, DeRon Horton, Amanda Warren, Nazneen Contractor, Niles Fitch, Hugo Armstrong and Jocelyn Ayanna.
Rating: Poor.
Dan Gilroy, writer/director of 2014´s “Nighcrawler” brings “Roman J. Israel, Esq”, his second feature film and unfortunately the results weren´t satisfying.
The movie tells the story of Roman J. Israel, Esq (Denzel Washington) a idealistic defense attorney who works in a small law firm in Los Angeles.
One day he is fired from his job and is hired to work with George Pierce (Colin Farrell) in a bigger law firm.
Everywhere he goes Roman carries a briefcase of a big case that he has been working for years in regards of chancing the current justice system.
Eventually Roman will have an existential crisis that will lead him to make a series of choices that eventually will have a serious repercution.
Now Roman will have to be careful on making the correct choices before he does some damage to himself and others.
“Roman J. Israel, Esq” is a movie that had a very promising beginning but everything wend downhill from the half of the second act to the end of the film.
It´s a shame since I really loved “Nightcrawler”, which I considered one of 2014´s best films and I loved the approach that Dan Gilroy took in that film.
For that reason I was having a huge expectation that “Roman J. Israel, Esq.” should have been a better movie.
The major problem like I mentioned was the screenplay itself. I felt the movie was too long and there were moments that I didn´t feel for any of the characters and the movie was excessively slow.
I felt that the movie if not only the story would have been condensed, I think we would be talking right now of another product.
On the positive side the performance of Denzel Washington is remarkable as always. He´s approach on playing a characters with a lot of emptiness was really good and the way how he transformed to give life to Roman J. Israel, Esq was impressive.
The score and the editing of the film were very good. I liked the mood of the picture and that is one thing that really works.
Unfortunately this are not elements that I can put to recommend a film of this caliber and I hope that Dan Gilroy learned his lesson. I think that he is one brillian filmmaker and did a remarkable job with his first film but not here.
If you want to see a good performance of Denzel Washington go and see this film but if you want to see it for other reasons I think you are going to be dissapointed.