Against himself

First things first: Don’t search Rotten Tomatoes or other critic aggregators to decide whether to see Roman J. Israel, Esq., a legal thriller starring Denzel Washington. Many of those reviews came in when the first version of the film screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, and the writer/director Dan Gilroy (who wrote and directed the Oscar-nominated Nightcrawler) recut the movie in response to the initial criticisms.

The newly edited movie is still shy of a home run, but it’s a worthwhile two hours. The two primary reasons are a thoughtful script and Denzel Washington, who dazzles as an against-type character. He plays Roman, a Los Angeles defense lawyer who seems to be somewhere on the autism spectrum and who primarily sits in a back office typing briefs. Israel is single, and the peanut butter sandwiches he eats every meal show that his lawyer career hasn’t brought him much prosperity. The film is rated PG-13 primarily for language.

The opening shot is a typed-out lawsuit Israel is filing against himself. Huh?! Then we return to the beginning of the tale: Israel’s legal partner has a heart attack, forcing Israel to make a series of moral choices about the future of his work. Without the public face of the firm, can the socially inept Roman continue to defend his clients in the criminal justice system? Will he make his next rent check? How will he handle the slick lawyer George Pierce (Collin Farrell), who comes to close Roman’s firm and snap up Roman’s bargain savant skills? (It calls to mind Romans Chapter 7: “So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.”)

Washington worked closely with Gilroy in developing the film, and the two said they had a spiritual friendship as well, praying together every morning when their days started around 4 a.m. “We know who we work for,” Washington, a professing Christian, said. Washington can’t seem to help himself in presenting the gospel, even in a 20-minute interview. “It’s so difficult to trust that Jesus died for our sins,” he said, explaining that his art is tied to his message. “We know, but we forget constantly.”

Christian themes are clear in the story, even if they aren’t as explicit as Washington is in his interviews. The script addresses, without preachiness, the troubles of an unjust system and the troubles of our immoral selves. On a system level, Roman is constantly dealing with broken institutions—from jails mistreating his juvenile clients to the city ignoring his calls about noise complaints. And on an individual level, the main characters wrestle with their own failings.

To reporters, Gilroy talked about Roman as an inspirational character, a Christ figure even, but that’s not what I absorbed from the film. It’s a story of the corruption of human nature, even of moral people. And Gilroy’s previous film, Nightcrawler, explores a similar theme. What looks beautiful, for example one scene where a character relaxes at the beach with a hibiscus cooler, might be ugly underneath. That doesn’t mean this is a bleak film—it’s not—but it’s not really so inspirational as the promoters might indicate.

“Purity can’t survive in this world,” Roman says at one point. After all, the lawsuit he files in the first shot is titled Roman J. Israel, Esq. vs. Himself.

Producer Jennifer Fox noted that Roman’s “belief that justice and mercy cannot be divorced nearly wrecks him.” The implications of that tension aren’t clear. Washington brought up, in a conversation with Gilroy, that he disagreed with one of the characters’ lines, about forgiving yourself. “You can’t grant forgiveness to yourself,” Washington said. Gilroy said the line was merely a reflection of where the character was mentally.

“My biggest conflict,” Gilroy said, “is with my conscience.”