THE LINCOLN LAWYER

One of the strangest science-fiction films I've ever seen. At first glance, the film seems to exist in a slightly exaggerated realist mode, only to pivot more and more as the film continues. Lincoln's license plate having an extra letter, motorcycle gangs positioned as an alternative to the "justice system" of Los Angeles, an antique gun once owned by a mobster; these small moments hint at a stranger, more diseased world than what we're shown.

LA is shot with a dusty, washed-up tone, as if climate change has ravaged the city even more in the intervening years. Oddly, San Francisco seems relatively untouched by the apocalyptic setting. Perhaps the filmmakers were swayed by the silver-tongued promises of Silicon Valley into imagining that SF remains a bubble protected by wealth and technology? But, of course, we only visit a prison in the area (San Quentin) which seems as grungy and crude as a modern-day depiction. Regardless of the filmmaker's goals, it's clear that the sunny oasis of San Francisco doesn't share its gifts with the poor and imprisoned.

There are other odd moments in the central case that Lincoln takes on. Both Lincoln and his investigator respond to the client's explanation that he's being set up and blackmailed for money at face value. Rather than acknowledge the improbability of this scheme ever working, they take it at face value. The easy explanation would be that they're fooled by the client's contrived explanations, but both Lincoln and his investigator—Frank, played mostly by a wig worn by Fargo's William H. Macy—are implied to be more cynical and thoughtful men than the type that would buy a rich kid's innocence. Instead, the most logical explanation is that this type of scheme is actually quite prevalent in Lincoln's world. The apocalyptic climate change outside of the city must have led to even higher levels of economic disparity. In other words, the rich have become super rich while the poor scramble for inflated scraps.

That interpretation also seems consistent with Lincoln's working-class demeanor. He's able to swindle the client's family lawyer out of a solid 100k+ paycheck, and his first response to obstacles in the courthouse is bribery and trickery. Yet, he seems desperately money-hungry; he walks out on the bar tab with Frank, and he refuses to defend a seemingly trustworthy client over a few thousand dollars.

The setting's grim dystopia becomes even more clear at the end of the film when Lincoln finds himself blackmailed with a murder charge at the hands of his client. If he gets his client off, Lincoln will be framed for murder, but if he refuses to defend his client or reveal what he knows to the police, he'll be disbarred. Lawyers, once an occupation that allowed for a certain level of socio-economic flexibility, have become pure tools of the rich. Perhaps not a huge jump from our modern era, but whatever wiggle room once existed for the just and the clever seems to be extinguished. In this future, the rich can literally blackmail and frame their lawyers, and the punishment for pushing back against that is disbarment... unquestionably a death sentence in this burnt-out world.

Note that there's no homeless people on screen, no glimpse at any sort of economic underbelly. We're watching those at the bottom already; the thin veneer of middle-class wealth they're wrapping around themselves to attempt to fit in with the ultra-rich is as ill-fitting as it is obvious. Lincoln is driven around in a quasi-limo by a black driver, but he can't even offer enough of a paycheck to the driver to offset the occasional parking ticket. It's a child wearing his father's suit hoping to be considered an equal. It's no wonder that his client and his mother hate him so much they're willing to kill him; his entire personality is a mockery to the world they were born into.

Still, Lincoln seems to have learned a lesson from his dalliance with the ultra-powerful; his final scene shows him offering to work pro bono for the motorcycle gang that seems to be a kind of police force for the underclass. Lincoln might not have been able to join the upper-crust, but he's found that an alliance with a private police force may benefit him in the future.

Better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven, it seems, although how long anyone has left to live before the desert wind reduces LA to nothing remains unclear.