The Ides of March

Back in the late 1930′s, when our great-grand-parents were coming of age and discovering sex and politics (most assuredly in that order but I have no way to verify) populist film director Frank Capra brought forth the great grandfather of all political films. The title was Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). It starred Jimmy Stewart and Jean Arthur, and what was billed, at the time, as the greatest cast of supporting actors ever. The film garnered 11 Oscar Nominations but won only one Oscar.

A film adapted from a popular novel by Margaret Mitchell, called Gone With the Wind, walked off with most of the gold that year including Best Picture.

However Mr. Smith was a brilliant film – Jimmy Stewart played Jefferson Smith who was appointed as a compromise by the governor of an unnamed western state to replace a Senator who had just passed on. Smith was appointed because the sitting governor couldn’t abide the political boss’s handpicked stooge and he had to worry about his own re-election so he couldn’t name a popular reformer because that would piss off his bosses. So, the middle of the road type, read as unknown, Jefferson Smith is appointed to the Senate vacancy because he was naive, inexperienced, an idealist, and yet could be (they assumed) easily manipulated.

Mr. Smith turned out to be a film that stood Washington on its head. While it is an inspirational and feel good story of the highest caliber, the Washington Press Corps and the US Congress reviled the film because of its portrayal of the corruption  and venality in those hallowed halls of the American Government. The Senators and Congressmen didn’t much care for the fact that they came off looking like a bunch of crooks at worst, or a bunch of hogs at the trough at best.

So with a film like that one, symbolizing one of the major roots of political drama in cinema, we can look back and take note of some of the off-springs of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, beginning with Robert Redford in The Candidate (1972), Redford and Dustin Hoffman in All The President’s Men (1976), Joan Allen in The Contender (2000), and of course, The American President (1995) which was directed by Rob Reiner and starred Michael Douglas and Annette Bening. These films made statements about the life and times of American politics and its natural bedfellow – the press.

The Lincoln Lawyer

While this is the first time all of us have seen Matthew McConaughey on screen as LA Lawyer Mick Haller, I’ll venture to say that it is quite likely that it won’t be the last. Can you spell sequel?

I first met Haller in Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch novel called The Black Echo which was penned nearly twenty years ago in 1992. But I just read that novel only a few months back in November. The Haller character had little more than an extended walk on in that novel, and really didn’t make an impact on me.

But now here he is, straight from the pages of his own Connelly novels, embodied by McConaughey in a brand new film, The Lincoln Lawyer. Don’t be misled by the title. It is not a reference to either Abe Lincoln, nor is it a reference to anything to do with Washington, DC and its emblematic Lincoln Memorial. Instead, it references that Haller the lawyer is office-less, or rather his office is a big black Lincoln automobile.

He’s not a celebrity attorney, nor is he an attorney for celebrities and/ or the wealthy – until his bail-bondsmen chum Val Valenzuela played by John Leguizamo (below), points Haller towards a big-ticket client named Louis Roulet played by Ryan Phillippe. Roulet has been busted for allegedly beating and raping a prostitute. Haller meets him in the lockup before his Inglewood bail hearing. Roulet declares his innocence.