Michael Connelly is not a new name for the lovers of detective novels and legal thrillers. About 31 novels written by him have been published in about 40 languages and he has a readership of 75 million. In 2005, he wrote a novel “The Lincoln Lawyer” which became so popular that it was first made into a film and now recently a web series of 10 episodes which has been released on Netflix. In this, the main character is a lawyer named Mickey Haller who solves the cases of his clients while getting entangled with some personal and some legal problems, but his morality always prevents him from supporting the wrong people. Till 2019, 7 novels of this series have come. The web series The Lincoln Lawyer is basically based on the novel of the same name, as well as some episodes of Mickey Haller’s life from other novels have been included in it so that his character can come out strongly. Some other stories have also been shown in the series which are not directly related to Mickey’s life but definitely increase the length of the series.
Mickey Haller (Manuel Garcia) has been married twice, with a daughter from his first marriage, and his first wife, Maggie (Neve Campbell), is also a lawyer and works in the District Attorney’s office. Second wife Lorna (Becky Newton) now works with Mickey as his secretary. Some time ago, Mickey got an innocent person sentenced to jail in a case, after which he had an accident and he became addicted to drugs while going through internal conflict. When he returns after getting rid of his addiction, he gets the news of the murder of a lawyer he knows. A judge calls Mickey and gives him all the cases of a lawyer he knows, in which the main case is Trevor Elliott, the owner of a gaming company, who is accused of murdering his wife and his wife’s lover, a yoga teacher. The series follows the story of this case as well as Mickey’s other cases, his attempts to mend his relationship with his first wife and daughter, and his attempts to re-establish his practice.
The concept of Lincoln Lawyer is unique. Mickey does not like to work sitting in the office, so he runs his office in his Lincoln car and investigates the case, due to which everyone calls him Lincoln Lawyer. Although it has been shown very superficially in this series, but this car is an important part of the story. Unlike Hindi films and web series, in American Legal Stories, the lawyer only advocates. A lawyer is not all-rounder and therefore his secretary has to do a lot of work. He hires a private detective type of person to spy on the case. To get information about the case from the police, he also takes the help of his detective. Matthew McConaughey was the hero of the film made on Lincoln Lawyer in 2011 and that film was very much liked. In the character of Mickey Haller, Manuel Garcia has done well but he has not been able to match Matthew McConaughey. In the first two-three episodes, Manuel is not able to leave any special impact, but gradually he also returns to his colors and takes the audience under his control. In the entire series, he has never been seen uttering unnecessary dialogues. In contrast, Christopher Gorham has done a wonderful job in the role of his client, Trevor Eliot. Christopher has previously been seen by the audience in several films and in a famous TV show called Covert Operation, he played the important role of Augie Anderson, a blind technician.
Legal maneuvers and heavy legal language have not been used in the web series at all. The cases that help Mickey regain his lost confidence are not solved by legal tricks. Although the game of law tricks has been shown in one case through Mickey’s wife Maggie, but they were also woven into the story in a very simple way. Mickey’s secretary and second wife, Lorna, has also dropped out of law school because her professor tried to molest her. Lorna also knows a little about the law, but she remains Mickey’s friend most of the time. The rest of the cast, such as Angus Sampson as Cisco, Natare Guma as Detective Griggs, or Jazzy Rakol as Izzie, have performed well. The rest of the actors come on screen for a short time and act according to their ability. By the way, if Mickey’s two wives Maggie and Lorna are left out, then the rest of the cast looks almost ordinary.
Ted Humphrey and David Kelly have written this series together and instead of making it a boring legal series, they have turned it into an interesting story. The name of the series is certainly Lincoln Lawyer but its story is taken from the second book of the Mickey Haller series, The Brass Verdict. The weakness of this series is its over-reliance on its characters, especially Mickey. It seems that preparations have been made to make a season ahead of this as well, but in this season there is a lack of legal stakes. How a case is made, what preparation goes into its presentation, how the judge behaves and how the jury makes an emotional decision…all these have been dealt with very quickly. Small cases have been shown to establish Mickey’s character, they have also been finished very quickly, due to which Mickey’s intelligence is not visible. At many places, even the intelligence of the defendant’s lawyer and the judge is doubted that they left such a huge evidence and weakened their own case. If full focus was kept on only one case and if mystery was added to it through the characters, then perhaps this series would have become more interesting, by not keeping small stories, the time of at least two episodes could have been saved and the web series was 8 episodes. I would have finished.
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Tags: movie review, netflix
FIRST PUBLISHED : May 20, 2022