"The Lincoln Lawyer" vs. Maybach Man

On consecutive nights recently I watched Matthew McConaughey as "The Lincoln Lawyer" (he plays Mickey Haller, a flashy high-powered, criminal defense lawyer driven around L.A. in a shiny black Lincoln — license plate "NTGUILTY" — by a longtime loyal chauffeur/jack-of-all-trades legal and not) and Bradley Cooper as Eddie Morra in "Limitless" as a latter-day "Flowers for Algernon"/"Charly," a pretty much failed writer who happens on a superdrug that renders him a genius, with all manner of extraordinary capabilities.

I noticed during "Limitless" that Morra was being driven around Manhattan in a very swish car that didn't immediately cause the penny to drop, the realization only dawning after seeing it onscreen a few times that — I'm 95% certain — it was a Maybach, Mercedes' über-car that has ünderperformed to the tune of global sales last year amounting to only 200 or so cars (they start at $375,000 and the sky's the limit) with Mercedes as a result on the brink of closing its Maybach division.

Nice interior, for sure.

I've yet to see a Maybach in person nor has anyone I know, though a friend of mine in Texas was going to test drive one before a scheduling conflict took him out of town on the appointed day.

The movies?

Oh, yeah, the movies — "The Lincoln Lawyer" I liked a lot, finally McConaughey has moved beyond just making an appearance and he makes Mickey Haller crackle.

Bonus: Marisa Tomei plays his ex-wife, a district attorney who's still in love with him although she tries to convince herself that's not the case.

Robert DeNiro, as a Philip Falcone/John Malone type in "Limitless," steals the movie from Cooper, with his icy demeanor and quietly threatening manner running up against Morra's alternating over-the-top supermind persona and the less-than-confident version who tries to pretend when his superdrug brain/blood level drops.

Good entertainment, both.