While not as earth-shattering as the movies and performances that were to follow, the movie that fostered in the beginning of McConaughey’s transition from dull rom-coms to more serious and exciting projects was 2011’s The Lincoln Laywer. This may be a result of diminishing expectations for Matthew McConaughey vehicles at the time, but critics received the courtroom drama rather warmly, and McConaughey’s presence in it harkened viewers back to his famous 1996 performance alongside Samuel L. Jackson in A Time to Kill.
Here we see McConaughey being his familiar old charming self: smart, witty, cool in the faces of any attempts at intimidation, and tough when he needs to be. The nice thing about this movie and McConaughey’s performance is that we get to see him in one of his most serious characters since the Grisham adaptation, as if playing a lawyer again put him back in the place he was at in the 90s, or perhaps because he has such respect for the profession. It’s his charisma that keeps our interest in his quest to get to the bottom of this case, despite being a defense lawyer for the seediest types of characters. But he seems to have given a little something extra for the first time in what felt like forever, which turned out to be a welcome sign of things to come.
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