How did this director get this much talent to work with and waste most of it? The cast is unbelievable and things started well, but took a boring and predictable nosedive fast. You don't give a novice director talent to waste like this! The first 20 minutes looked great. Then a story had to be woven. William H Macy and Bryan Cranston in one movie together? Both of these great actors used about 10% of their potential. That is movie sin. Then the lame camera work. What kind of amateur director does a 360 shot in a courtroom for dramatic appeal? The flashback scenes were horrible. This is a perfect example of how TV dramas on cable make motion pictures look like B movies. Even on a TV show having a biker gang appear out of nowhere would lose the intelligence of an audience. That was done on the Rockford Files in 1974!Brad Furman will not confuse anyone of being compared to Adam Bernstein. Adam directed an episode of Breaking Bad. You didn't think I was going to put him in a class like Christopher Nolan did you?

....That my girlfriend threw her glass of wine straight into her own eyes!

Lots of good acting and directing and dialogue. But to many gaping plot holes.1, he says he got hit on the head and knocked out. but the two men who helped the victim would have testified he was not. that one alone would have found him guilty without a doubt as I'm sure they would have also testified to witnessing the bad guy beating the victim. 2, the other guy in jail for the similar crime would have also testified that this new bad guy was his bad guy too. instant get of of jail free card. but he doesn't use it, instead he freaks out and runs away. total garbage. the script writer was an idiot for using that and everyone letting that stay in the movie is an idiot too. 3, the gun was stolen from the lawyers office, not his home. maybe his home doesn't have cameras, maybe it does. but the office would have and it would have also been easy enough to find on the cameras when the bad guy came into the building on his own when the gun was stolen. also, no reason to believe the bad guy knew any gun was there. made worse when the lawyer doesn't tell the police his gun is stolen. (and yes, that gun could have been linked to him by the old bullets tracing, not the shells, if any bullets have been kept also as it was used in evidence previously as claimed it was still) 4, hard to believe anyone, lawyers included, especially this lawyer, wouldn't have made sure the damaging evidence against his confessed guilty client had made it into the hands of the right people while keeping his hands clean of it. especially after the bad guy made this extra personal by killing his friend. those 4 points brought this otherwise unexceptional typical courtroom drama down from a probably 6.5 or 7 to a 1.to many times movies mistakes are missed or ignored because of all the nice flashy good stuff in between. but if you don't pay attention, you are only fooling yourself. Hollywood, like anyone else, needs to be as accurate as possible to be responsible to the audience. i personally hate it when they mess up history. if censorship should be anywhere, it should be when history is twisted for the sake of being creative.

This is a slick, flashy, courtroom thriller about a slick, flashy lawyer. Mick Haller (Matthew McConaughey) makes a fast buck defending ne'er do wells, until he's presented with a gift wrapped opportunity to line his pockets defending a rich kid accused of assault.McConaughey does well in the cocky titular role, showing us a near alcoholic whose life is disintegrating around him as he finds himself wading through something much deeper than he'd expected. Ryan Phillippe, as Louis Roulet (the rich kid) fails to provide a convincing counterweight, and other members of a promising cast are underused, with the lovely Marisa Tomei and William H. Macy almost wasted. As with most things slick and flashy, it doesn't have much depth. You slip and slide from one scene to the next without having a moment to draw breath. It is fast paced, and exciting, but the story is far fetched and implausible. If you want to waste a couple of hours, you could do much worse. However, if you're looking for something particularly worthwhile, this probably isn't going to be it.