I am a fanatic about wanting to see the movie AFTER I read the book it is based upon. Sometimes this does not always work out. Sometimes I have read the book years before. Sometimes the book doesn’t interest me when it comes out, but I see the movie anyway. Sometimes I don’t even know that it was based upon a book. However, my experience with The Lincoln Lawyer was completely different. I had had the book on my shelf for about 6 months in anticipation of the movie. For whatever reason, I waited until the last moment to read it. To be completely honest, I even contemplated not reading the book at all because Michael Connelly is not one of my absolute favorite authors, he’s just someone who I read occasionally. Let me just say that if you read my review you know that the book absolutely blew me away. It was a 500 page book that I devoured in 4 days. I could hardly stand to put it down. After I finished the book, I told my husband we could go see the movie over the weekend. Then I started to kick around the idea of not wanting to see the movie because I knew I would be disappointed.
So now that I have seen the movie, was I disappointed? No, not really. However, the book was so much better. There were just little intricacies that the movie couldn’t even begin to showcase that the book included. There were a few subtle differences, but for the most part, the screenplay was very consistent with the book. As I stated in my review, I really did think that the casting was really good as far as the characters were concerned. There was one cast member that I wasn’t completely sold on as to the casting job: Josh Lucas as Ted Minton, the prosecutor. I’m not sure who I would have put in that role, but based on the description of Minton’s character in the book, I would have chosen someone who was younger than Lucas (not that Lucas is old, just older than I would have thought right for the description of the character). I am not a huge Matthew McConaughey because more of his recent movies have been silly (and I am not a fan of silly movies), but I really like it when he takes on a more serious role (see We Are Marshall, A Time to Kill). And let me just say that Ryan Phillippe as Louise Roulet was perfect! So what does this all boil down to? The book is better. Not that the movie is bad, because it’s a really good movie. It’s just that once you’ve read the book you can really see the differences between the book and the movie, and unfortunately the book wins out as far as which is better. I would highly recommend the book AND the movie 🙂
Tales of a Book Addict 