Robert Downey, Jr.
Robert Duvall
Vera Farmiga
Vincent D’Onofrio
Jeremy Strong
Dax Shepard
Billy Bob Thornton

Nick Schenk
Bill Dubuque

141 mins.
Crime, Drama
October 10, 2014

Rated R for language including some sexual references. (MPAA)

“The Judge,” directed by David Dobkin (who also directed “Wedding Crashers” and “Shanghai Nights”), is a chance for Robert Downey, Jr. and Robert Duvall to go toe-to-toe. It’s the clash of the acting styles. You can predict what their characters’ traits will be without even seeing the film. Their supporting cast, including Vincent D’Onofrio, Vera Farmiga, Jeremy Strong, Billy Bob Thornton (an interesting choice to play the prosecutor), Dax Shepard, and Leighton Meester, is a strong one. But the actors aren’t fully supported by Bill Dubuque’s and Nick Shenk’s script. (Shenk wrote Clint Eastwood’s “Gran Torino,” by the way. That’s not a good sign.) This film provides absolutely nothing new.

Duvall plays the title character, Judge Palmer. Downey, Jr. plays his middle son, Hank Palmer, the hot-shot lawyer son who got away. When they first meet after years of separation and the death of the matriarch of the family, the judge says, “Henry.” His son replies, “Judge.” So we have another strained father-son relationship that will be hashed out over the course of the film. Hank will get the opportunity to defend his father for a certain crime, and he’ll discover that his father is more than a former alcoholic. Judge Palmer will admit that he was wrong in some way by the end. They’ll have some sort of understanding.

This film begins with little energy, but it finds a bit more later on. At the beginning, we find out that Hank is a defense attorney who doesn’t care about the guilt of his clients. He’s overworked, too (how novel). His wife cheated on him, leading to an impending divorce. He has a daughter who’s sweet as pie. He tells the wife that the daughter will live with him. She counters with his lack of knowledge regarding their daughter’s life and his inability to spend time with them without work interruptions. Sound familiar? His father regards him as a prodigal son. The son regards his father as a big fish in an irrelevant, backwater pond. He’s happy he escaped to bigger and better places (still nothing new). There are other parts of the story, but I won’t bother with them. You can see them coming a mile away.

It’s unfortunate that these actors haven’t been given juicier, fuller material. Many of them play superfluous characters, and much of the material comes out flat. But the acting is pretty good. Robert Duvall, once again, delivers; but this performance echoes other performances of his that are much more impressive. Downey, Jr. avoids embarrassment, but he’s not fully convincing in the climactic courtroom scene. He doesn’t land it. Speaking of which, the courtroom scenes, while clichéd, work for the most part; but those kinds of scenes are hard to mess up.

“The Judge” is a cross between “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” and “My Cousin Vinny,” but from a dramatic point of view. Does that make sense? It alternates between the dramatic and the heartwarming. It has comedic touches here and there, as well; Downey, Jr. is in it, after all. It’s fairly watchable and extremely familiar. It’ll pass the time, I guess.

Verdict: OK

About: (Source: thejudge)

In “The Judge,” Downey stars as big city lawyer Hank Palmer, who returns to his childhood home where his estranged father, the town’s judge (Duvall), is suspected of murder. He sets out to discover the truth and along the way reconnects with the family he walked away from years before.