As we kick off the holiday season in one of the most explosive years in modern American politics, it seems like the perfect time for good progressives to gather together and be uplifted by a story about a passionate crusader for civil justice. But if you walk into Roman J. Israel, Esq. expecting the Battle Hymn of The Resistance, you might come out disappointed.
 
The film touches on inequality in the justice system and some other topical themes, but it veers away from those discussions without really exploring them in much depth. Instead, we follow the title character as he stumbles and mumbles through three weeks of internal conflict, acting as both plaintiff and defendant in his own personal trial of the century. The film is more enjoyable if you look at it as a character study rather than a structured narrative, and Denzel Washington’s strong performance saves a film that might otherwise might be pretty tough to get through.
 
Washington plays Roman, a rumpled legal savant whose noble ideals and bold fashion choices are rooted in a bygone era. He’s worked behind the scenes at the same tiny defense firm for four decades, but abruptly must strike out on his own after the lead attorney suffers a heart attack, leaving him jobless. Thus begins a meandering odyssey in which Roman improbably finds himself fending off job offers from a high-powered defense attorney (Colin Farrell) and kindling a tepid friendship with a kindhearted community organizer (Carmen Ejogo). His ensuing journey dances around the question of whether an old-school approach to grassroots activism can still hack it in a time when civil rights have been derisively rebranded as “identity politics.”
 
Roman is idealistic, principled and persistent, at least on his best days, but his crippling awkwardness all but obscures these strengths. This is where Washington’s talent as a physical actor really shines through: Roman walks with a clumsy gait that progresses into an even clumsier run, and the combined effect of his bad posture and nervous tics make him look uncomfortable and out of place pretty much wherever he goes.
 
It’s not long before Roman is tempted by the allure of the corner office, and despite believing that he’s in it for all the right reasons, he struggles to resist the flirtations of wealth and power and criminal intrigue.
 
“I’m tired of doing the impossible for the ungrateful,” he says, defensively revealing a core frustration of being a committed advocate: putting in an immense amount of thankless work, often with little in the way of tangible payoff.
 
It’s not a bad message, but it gets muddled by an uneven tone. Is this a legal drama about an underdog who crusades against injustice, breaks all the rules, and wins cases that ought to be sure losers? A dark comedy about a bumbling but endearing do-gooder and his quest to find love? A crime thriller about a regular guy who somehow gets mixed up in the criminal underworld? The film somewhat erratically skips around between each of these storylines, never really committing to one coherent thread.
 
In one sense it’s good that the film defies categorization—for long stretches we get to see Roman just being himself, for better or worse, without knowing where the story will take him. However, the uneven tone does make it harder to swallow some pretty lazy plot shortcuts.
 
This meandering approach worked much better in writer/director Dan Gilroy’s terrific 2014 thriller Nightcrawler, which also happens to focus on a character who just kind of floats through life, taking advantage of whatever opportunities happen to fall into his lap. But while Jake Gyllenhaal’s antihero in that film is essentially an unhinged bottom-feeder, Roman acknowledges his moral quandaries and does his best to navigate a justice system that isn’t built for noble causes.
 
But at the end of the day, neither Roman J. Israel, Esq. nor its title character really know what they want to be.
 
— Rob Heidrick

Surrounded by such easily accessible excesses in our lives, it can be tough to know when to tap out—when to say “enough.” “Maybe it was a bad idea to marathon Stranger Things until 3 a.m.” “Perhaps spending my morning reading plot synopses for every film in the Saw series out of morbid curiosity wasn’t the best use of time.” “Why’d I have that third taco?” Etc.

When you’re drinking from the firehose, you end up feeling hosed—and can find your thirst replaced with a sense of drowning.
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That’s where I’ve found myself with superhero movies. Like others who grew up squandering their allowances on Toy Biz X-Men figures and Kenner Batman toys, when Iron Man came and rocket-blasted my adult-sized Superman socks off, I was thrilled with the prospect of a decades-long run of shared comic-book universe films following the colorfully costumed do-gooders of my youth. But then I realized for every Iron Man, there must be an Iron Man 2; for every Guardians of the Galaxy, I’d have to power my way through an Age of Ultron.

The biannual conveyor belt never stops, and after a years-long force-fed binge of superhero schlock, I had become numb to any sense of joy I once derived from seeing the heroes of my childhood comics and cards come to life on the big screen by the time the third Iron Man landed around in 2013.

Enter stage right, Thor: Ragnarok.

I wasn’t. No. I have become wary even of critical acclaim after too many just-OK films got labeled must-sees. “Dude... Logan,” you may have heard. “It’s actually good. Like, it might get a Best Picture nomination—and it should!” (It won’t, and it shouldn’t.) “Captain America: Civil War has a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes,” you may have read. (What? No. Why?) Heck, even the The Dark Knight, the would-be Citizen Kane of comic-book movies, only seems like such a beaut' because it’s surrounded by its plain-looking entourage of superhero film friends.