Roman J. Israel, Esq. movie review (2017)
Eventually, we’ll return to this brief, but for now, we’re thrown three weeks into the past where Roman makes his first court appearance in decades. Despite being told by William’s assistant to simply ask for continuances, Roman engages the case. His client is getting a raw deal, to be sure, but Roman exacerbates the situation by arguing with the judge until he is held in contempt. Later, Roman will again go against his firm’s wishes by telling off the district attorney in regards to a plea offer. Both of these scenes are played for laughs in the film’s trailer, but neither scene is so damn funny in context: that contempt charge gets William’s near-bankrupt firm slapped with a $5,000 fine; the district attorney flap indirectly results in a client’s murder.
It’s clear that Washington and Gilroy want to cast Roman as some kind of grumpy genius—he’s the Dr. House of lawyers. The problem is that, unlike Dr. House, Roman is horrible at his job. You would not want this man representing you, nor would you want him, as Maya (Carmen Ejogo) discovers, to come speak at your activism meeting. Since William’s firm was known for its community service, Maya hopes Roman can inspire her group. But Roman’s ideas about women are as outdated as his clothing. This too is played for laughs in the trailer; in the film, the scene ends with an angry activist leveling the F-word at a confused Roman, turning this important meeting into chaos.
The film's romantic interest Maya has the thankless job of echoing how great and inspiring Roman is supposed to be. She’s necessary because we never see a single thing to support why we’d care about Roman or his story. On a dinner date, Maya is so overwhelmed with admiration for Roman that she bursts into tears, and while Ejogo convincingly weeps, I couldn’t help but ask myself “why?” You’ll be asking yourself “why” a lot too, as this lifeless, interminable movie plays as if the filmmakers threw the footage up in the air and edited it in the order it hit the floor.
