Roman J Israel Esq

Roman J. Israel (Denzel Washington ) plays a lawyer. He is a old fashioned, idealistic defense attorney. His life is shattered when his mentor, his teacher, a civil rights icon, has a heart attack. He begins to manage the law firm in hopes his boss will be ok. But his boss dies. Jobless and only armed with his wit and his morals. He struggles to find another job. His mentor’s wife persuade a well off former student of the teacher ( Colin Farrell ) to help Roman out. It’s here were thing go from bad to worse. One bad decision has a ripple affect and the consequences of that could be deadly.

The AFI film festival premiered Roman J. Israel, Esq. with a conversation right before with director/writer Dan Gilroy. Dan Gilroy was nominated for the Academy Award for his screenplay for Nightcrawler. It premiered at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival on September 9, 2017.

The film had just been renamed Roman J. Israel, Esq. June 22, 2017. Dan Gilroy believes he’s a realistic film maker and wanted to create something honest and raw. Which is why he chose to go to downtown Los Angeles and shoot with Denzel and only five or six crew camera members. Dan has always been a open type of director always wanting to communicate the feeling of the scene wit the actor. He believes it important that when the actors have a question, he doesn't rush them. They figured out best answer to the questions together.

April 21, 2017, the Inner City movie began filming. On site location was in Downtown Los Angeles. The people in the movie are real people. The crew hid cameras to get real life footage of Denzel walking down street. He purposely was put in shoes two sizes to big. To get the walk desired. There was also 30 pounds of paper put inside the brief case that Roman carried around. The reason he put on the head phones was to drown put the noice of everyday life. The crew used music from Denzel’s Ipod to make a playlist for him to list to. When they shot the one since in Venice on train. It took 4 months to get approval for downtown Venice train to approve filming. When they shot the Laker Game scene. It was all done with green screen. The cost of filming the real scene would gave been too much. So they shoot the scenes with them there, and photoshopped in the actual Laker game.

I did like this movie because of the freedom fighting attorney who was tryna do right. But I do think that it could have been better at some parts. I think that Denzel does a great job playing his character. I think the way he portrayed the role of the attorney was great. But I feel like to fell of on some parts. Colin Farrell did a good job. But toward the end, I think that it could have been better. I think it maybe was just missing something. The film was good overall. But I think it could have been better.

(English review, French one will be soon online)

Roman J. Israel, Esq.
Directed by Dan Gilroy
Produced by Todd Black and Jennifer Fox
Cinematography by Robert Elswit
Written by Dan Gilroy
Music by James Newton Howard
Production company: Bron Creative, Cross Creek Pictures, Escape Artists, Imagination Abu, Dhabi FZ and Macro Media
Duration: 129 minutes

Seen during a Special Screenings November 15, 2017, TCL Chinese Theatre

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