“Roman J. Israel, Esq.” Review

Roman J. Israel, Esq.: Directed by Dan Gilroy. With Denzel Washington, Colin Farrell, Carmen Ejogo, Lynda Gravatt. Roman J. Israel, Esq., a driven, idealistic defense attorney, finds himself in a tumultuous series of events that lead to a crisis and the necessity for extreme action.

I’ve recently become somewhat addicted to tiktok and one of the more interesting things they have is random highlight clips of movies and television shows and I flipped onto one featuring Denzel Washington acting as a belligerent lawyer who gets a $5k fine from a judge who was unhappy with all the talking back that was happening in the courtroom. It’s a great scene and prompted me to find where to watch “Roman J. Israel, Esq”. Turns out that the movie isn’t so much about a belligerent lawyer, but more about what Forest Gump would be like if he was more savant in nature, more radicalized, and less interesting. This isn’t a bad film by any measure, but the sum of it’s parts don’t necessarily make it a great film with a fuzzy set of principal morals to the story.

It’s always great to see Denzel work though, so even in a somewhat not great film he still shines.

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