The Judge English Movie
Sometimes, a film is so good that you can't get enough of it. Other times, a film just has too much going on for you to fall in love with it. The Judge is one of the latter films. Take an out-and-out family drama with a dash of courtroom drama and a pinch of self-introspection, and voila!, you have The Judge.
The Judge revolves around a big-time Chicago lawyer Hank Palmer, who is infamous for successfully defending guilty clients. He has to return to his small town and his estranged idealistic father, commonly referred to as The Judge, when his mother passes away. To make matters worse, his father ends up killing someone with his car, and it is up to Hank to prevent his father from being found guilty. Also in the mix are a crippled brother, an unstable brother, an ex-girlfriend and her daughter, and a self-righteous opposing lawyer.
The film has a story to tell, that of a dysfunctional family. But sadly, they have almost nothing new to add to the well-familiar genre. In fact, the film borrows heavily in the family drama department from successful films of the past. The courtroom sequences are extremely well shot (so is the rest of the movie, actually), but they lack the dramatic bite of, say, The Practice.
But director David Dobkin is a smart guy. He realizes that the material he has to work with is thin. So, he does what any other intelligent director would do: he puts Robert Downey Jr. in every single scene. Literally every single scene. And it works, at least for me.
Downey Jr. does what he does best: playing the role of a charming, quippy, snappy, witty, arrogant guy with a flair for speaking really fast. The last drama film that he did was The Soloist in 2009, but his dramatic chops are not the least bit rusty. He plays the character of Hank with characteristic flourish, never holding back. He shouts, cries, climbs pipes, does Sherlock-style deductions and makes you laugh, all with equal abandon. And every now and then, he does a swaggering walk while putting on his sunglasses. Every second he's on the screen (grand total of the number of seconds in 142 minutes), you cannot look at anybody else, let alone looking at your watch.
Robert Duvall, as The Judge, is absolutely brilliant. In the role of the distanced father whose ideals are more important to him than his fate and his legacy, he shines. Every scene that he shares with Downey Jr. elevates the film to a much higher graph. Vera Farmiga doesn't get enough screen time to make much of an impact. Billy Bob Thornton, as the public prosecutor, is surprisingly wooden. Vincent D'Onofrio and Jeremy Strong are impressive as the two brothers.
But despite the histrionics from the cast and the occasional heart-warming moments, the film never really manages to rise above it's problems and fully embrace it's spirit. And at a running length of almost 2.5 hours, there's not enough meat on those bones. Still, out of all the films this weekend, The Judge might just be your best and safest bet. Watch it for Robert Downey Jr.
