The title character of Roman J. Israel, Esq. is a sort of walking anachronism, a man out of time in more ways than one. A civil rights lawyer who never entered the modern era, he rarely leaves his cluttered Los Angeles office, preferring to let his much smoother partner operate as the firm’s public face. His boxy suits and unkempt hair suggest a man who doesn’t care a lot about what others think. Then his partner dies suddenly, leaving his cases to a well-coiffed (and white) pragmatist. Roman decides he might just want a piece of the pie. And he’s willing to make some very bad decisions to get it.
Of course we can’t take our eyes off Roman — he’s played by Denzel Washington who picked up one of his 10 Oscar nominations for the role — yet the movie was largely neglected by critics and at the box office upon its release in 2017. Though sometimes as baggy as Roman’s suits, it’s well worth rediscovering, particularly as a rich drama about the collision of ideology and reality, and as a great Los Angeles movie (something of a specialty of writer/director Dan Gilroy, who turned the city into a glimmering nightmare in the macabre TV news thriller Nightcrawler, another movie largely concerned with ethics and the lack thereof).
It’s safe to say Roman is not a polished trial lawyer (or a polished anything), and when he’s thrust from his perch as an eccentrically severe, savant-like housecat into positions that require interpersonal skills, the results are usually disastrous and often quite funny. Prosecutors hang up on him — he describes the offer made by one as “an enema of sunshine” — and one judge happily charges him with contempt for not piping down when ordered to. Roman seems to exist somewhere on the autism spectrum, but he’s a man of principle — a quality that endears him to an activist (Carmen Ejogo) who pierces his hard shell, and even to his new boss, the man who inherited his old boss’s cases, a decent-enough, high-powered and politically savvy defense lawyer played by Colin Farrell, an Irish actor who does slick Americans exceptionally well.
But the new Roman wants things. He wants a luxurious new dwelling. He wants to sit on the beach and eat gourmet donuts. He’d like a new wardrobe. In order to get these things, he commits a dangerous ethical lapse, turning in a murder suspect for the reward money. He figures nobody will find out. He’s wrong. Now Roman has a giant mark on his back. No one is trying to disbar him — just kill him. It seems it was easier staying in the shadows. Living in the morally compromised, big, bad world, he goes for the big brass ring. He betrays the only thing he ever really had: his principles. Does he have time to get them back?
The Los Angeles of Roman J. Israel, Esq. is a land of impersonal, steel-and-glass skyscrapers and interminable traffic, a modern-day concrete jungle where the sun beats down mercilessly during the day and loneliness sets in at night. This loneliness is key to the movie’s vision: Roman is a creature of isolation, stuck in the past, until he makes his ill-advised move. The movie suggests that his adherence to this particular past is not necessarily a bad place to be. Roman may be an antique, but he comes from a time when moral guideposts — his, anyway — were clearer and more honorable. Gilroy’s movie is a sort of elegy for firm beliefs, even when they come in antisocial packaging.
Roman J. Israel, Esq. deserves a bigger audience than it has had; it is already ripe for rediscovery, especially for Denzel completists and those who miss Hollywood star vehicles that are actually about ideas and social currents. It’s one of the most intriguing and unique lawyer movies out there, as distinctive as its divided protagonist.