The Judge, 2014.
Directed by David Dobkin.
Starring Robert Downey Jr., Robert Duvall, Vera Farmiga, Vincent D’Onofrio, Jeremy Strong, Dax Shepard, and Billy Bob Thornton.
SYNOPSIS:
A big-city lawyer returns home when his estranged father, a small-town judge, is accused of murder.
An unscrupulous attorney returns to his home town for the funeral of his mother where there is a lot of family hostility towards him; his planned escape is interrupted when his father is arrested for the murder of a recently released convict which he is known to have despised. A slow-witted brother documents everything by carrying around a film camera while the overweight sibling had his professional baseball career ended when he was involved in a car accident with the lawyer. There is also a high school sweetheart who is a single mother and successful local entrepreneur.
When it comes to the cast there is a lot of heavy weight talent appearing on the screen from Robert Duvall (Tender Mercies), Robert Downey Jr. (Chaplin), Billy Bob Thornton (Sling Blade), Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air) to Vincent D’Onofrio (The Whole Wide World); however, everything is undermined by a formulaic script that relies on cheap moments. The opening scene has Robert Downey Jr. “accidentally” urinating on an opposing attorney which he also did in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) but in that case it involved an corpse. The inclusion of the car accident footage as part of the home movie is so blatant that it is an unbelievable miscue even for the mentally challenged brother.
Iron Man (2008) skyrocketed Robert Downey Jr. into blockbuster stardom and it seems that ever since then he has been doing versions of the same smart ass hot shot; the acting routine is predictable and tiresome. The conflict between father and son is so overblown that you know that eventually they are going to reconcile with each other. It is groan inducing that the high school sweetheart will bed the boyfriend who left her behind in a heartbeat. Where the movie shows some cleverness is when the main character prevents a bar fight and his reaction when it occurs to him that the young girl he made out with may be his daughter. Overall, The Judge is a major disappointment.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★★/ Movie: ★★
Originally published September 13, 2014. Updated April 13, 2018.
