“I’m tired of doing the impossible for the ungrateful.” – Roman J Israel, played by Denzel Washington, in Roman J Israel Esq.

Nominations

Best Lead Actor

My Review

I’ll come right out and say it.  This movie is not great; it really just does not go anywhere and other than demonstrating that a U-Haul can really haul some ass (see what I did there), it didn’t do much for me. I don’t even know exactly how to categorize the movie – poorly executed legal thriller?

That being said, Denzel Washington, who plays the lead, is really quite good in his performance.  Not that we expected anything less from Denzel.  His character (Roman) is super complex, autistic, and out of his element and Denzel knocks it out of the park.  He is the only reason anyone knows about this movie.  I think he definitely deserves the nomination, but I don’t see him winning because it was torture trying to stay engaged in a movie with a plot that was fumbling around like a drunk looking for a bottle cap in a dumpster.