As a civil rights lawyer and leading partner in law firm Reddick, Boseman, & Kolstad, Adrian Boseman is the man who calls the shots on The Good Fight. Being played by Delroy Lindo doesn’t hurt his authority one bit: for over three decades now Lindo’s been Hollywood’s go-to actor when it comes to playing characters who can lay down the law no matter what side of the law they’re on.
With a career spanning close to forty years, there’s no shortage of highlights. So if you want to dig deeper into his career – or just want a reminder of all the great films he’s made greater – here’s five reasons why he’s one of the great hard men with heart.
He’s worked with Spike Lee
Lindo opposite John Turturro in 1995's 'Clockers'. Source: Supplied
He’s a great bad guy
Lindo’s first big box-office hit was Get Shorty, where he played Bo Catlett – the only bad guy who poses a serious threat to John Travolta’s Chilli Palmer. Sure, he’s playing a drug dealer again, but this time he’s a drug dealer who wants to get into the movie business; in a film full of comedy characters, he gives Catlett a smooth sense of menace. For the next decade or so he put together a string of strong performances as a man on the wrong side of the law – sometimes as a traditional bad guy (Domino), and sometimes as a professional whose job just happens to be high-end crime (Heist).
And then there’s the times he plays a man who has bad and good all messed up together: In The Cider House Rules he’s an incestuous rapist who then helps his pregnant daughter get an abortion – and then when she later stabs him he makes the wound worse so his death will be seen as a suicide. That’s not a character every actor could pull off, but Lindo makes his contradictions seem as natural as breathing.
Delroy Lindo in 'Heist' Source: Supplied
He’s a great good guy
Lindo appearing in the film 'Ransom'. Source: Supplied
When he wasn’t playing a guy who’d kill you if you got in his way, Lindo was playing a guy who’d kill you if you got in the way of the law. In Broken Arrow he was again a tough guy who was just not quite tough enough to defeat a (now villainous) John Travolta; in Ransom he was the FBI Agent you wanted to trust, but seemed too focused on playing by the rules to get the job done. And while playing a cop in the lawless free-for-all that was the remake of Gone in 60 Seconds seems like a thankless task, it’s really a sign of just how cool Lindo is: if you don’t have some badass cops in the mix (Lindo’s partner was played by Timothy Olyphant), how are we going to know the bad guys are cool?
While he may only seem like a good guy in comparison to just about everybody else running around kicking heads in trashy action flick Romeo Must Die – he’s a drug lord and property developer, but at least he’s not a murderer – in A Life Less Ordinary (Danny Boyle’s follow-up to Trainspotting) he got to play a literal angel, on a case with Holly Hunter to bring a couple of humans together and make sure they fall in love. Okay, so it’s not the best movie, but Lindo’s effortless cool makes him and Hunter one of the great double-acts almost nobody’s ever seen.
He was in Salute of the Jugger
An early appearance by Lindo in 'Salute of The Jugger'. Source: Supplied
He played Dopey Smurf on Robot Chicken
Proving he has range, it's Delroy Lindo as a Smurf. Source: Supplied
The Good Fight season 4 premieres Wednesday 23 September at 9:30pm on SBS. Episodes are also available at after each episode airs. Here is episode 1:
