Director: David Dobkin
Cast: Robert Downey, Jr., Robert Duvall, Vera Farminga, Billy Bob Thornton, Dax Shepard, Vincent D’Onofrio
Story: A hot shot lawyer returns to his old small town family home after the death of his mother, in spite of not being on speaking terms with his father who is a respected judge. Before he leaves for home his father is charged with murder after hitting a man with his car, and he is compelled to take the case.
Review: Sometimes when you go to the cinema you get those pick-mix candy set ups. There’s a bunch of containers filled with different goodies, you pay for a cup and fill it up with the ones you want. Some people prefer to stick to what they know they like, others economise and take the ones that over best value and some take a tiny little piece of each. Not enough to provide full enjoyment of any one thing, and providing bad combinations of candy flavours. If there was a pick-mix of drama movie cliches than The Judge took a tiny bit of each.
“Don’t forget to grab ‘the tough male lead sheds a single tear’.”
High powered city guy returns to small town. Man has to make amends with his father and see him as a person. Man meets ex-girlfriend who has a daughter the right age to be him. Man returned his brothers chance for a bright future with reckless youth behaviour, must make amends. Man must connect with daughter before losing her forever. There’s even a solid helping of Oscar bait cliches like a mentally handicapped brother, that fishing trip you never went on, an odd guy who’s always filming things. Also for some reason potential incest.
This is a movie with a lot jammed into it, which presents us with a complicated murder trail that, at heart, puts honesty against moral justice and father against son. Around that heart is a father who used to be alcoholic who hit a pedestrian with his car but he doesn’t remember doing it but he has a good reason for wanting to kill him but is getting chemo and his son with defend him but they don’t talk to each other and he ruined his brother’s life and just reunited with his old girlfriend and she has a daughter who could be his but he made out with the daughter and…and…
Ok, it was pretty dull. They kept heaping story upon story and not all of it got resolved. Some flat out ignored in the third act or glossed over with a band-aid explanation. Most frustrating is how uncommitted the director is to either side of the debate. Should they be honest or get him off the hook? In the end, they kind of do both. This approach is consistent to all elements of the movie. Everything is given a half-arsed wrap up. There’s a bit where he recaptures his youth by wearing a Metallica tee, and it last exactly one scene. Never comes up thematically again. In trying to juggle everything the movie pendulums between goofy, finding yourself scenes and heavy, heartfelt drama with a heavy handed musical score easing the transitions in the same way a brick can ease a headache. This could have been crafted into a solid dramatic tale but when helmed by the director of Wedding Crashes and Fred Claus…well, this is what you get.
“This will have no relevance on the rest of the story!”
In fairness it has to be said that all the performers do an excellent job on this film. Robert Downey, Jr. basically plays the same role he usually plays and it fits the character perfectly. Robert Duvall does the role more justice than it deserves and Vincent D’Onofrio does great stuff with the little time his character gets. One of the most engaging characters is Vera Farminga as the old girlfriend doing well for herself in her hometown but she is sadly under-utilised (as she all to often is). It’s just a shame all these good performances are showcased in a shonky product.
It’s longer than it needs to be and built on cliche. If you’d enjoy RDR reading the phone book then this is worth watching, otherwise it’s hard to recommend for anything but the performances. On one hand it deals with some pretty complex situations, on the other it features Robert Duvall shitting himself.
Rating: FOUR out of TEN
Just…walk away.
