It’s hard to go far wrong with a star-led courtroom drama (think Tom Cruise in A FEW GOOD MEN, Paul Newman in THE VERDICT and, going way back, Gregory Peck in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and James Stewart in ANATOMY OF A MURDER) but THE JUDGE has a pretty good try. From the moment Hank Palmer (Robert Downey Jnr) turns to an opponent and accidentally on purpose pees on his trousers in a court toilet, we know for sure we’re in the presence of 1) a maverick lawyer who’s going to behave badly, unscrupulously cut corners and hack off a lot of judges before 2) coming good in the end.
The judge Hank alienates most of all is his father Joseph (Robert Duvall) who’s sat on the small-town bench for forty years dispensing hard-line justice. After Hank’s mother dies, he pays a perfunctory visit to her funeral, and is on the point of a bitter departure when Joseph is suspected of killing by hit-and-run a former teenage murderer to whom he was once mysteriously lenient. Will Hank stay with his two damaged brothers – one a once promising ball-player whose career Hank was responsible for ending after he turned the family car over – and his torch-carrying ex-girlfriend (Vera Farmiga); or will he return to Chicago, and his disintegrating marriage and forthcoming custody battle over his cute daughter Lauren?
A question that hardly needs an answer, especially when Lauren arrives for a visit and bonds with her Grandad – Thomas Newman’s syrupy score playing full-blast in the background, as it does for most of the unfolding melodrama which throws in cancer, possible incest, graphic bodily function,s and just when the plot seems to be heading for the inevitable courtroom showdown, a hurricane courtesy of Pathetic Fallacy Solutions of Indiana.
Thornton flexes his sinister muscles the way he did in the FARGO remake…
Finally, and thankfully, we’re in court where prosecuting counsel Dwight Dickham (Billy Bob Thornton) awaits. He too has history with Hank, and describes him as a ‘shined-up wooden nickel’ which for a large part of THE JUDGE Hank is – and here’s part of its problem, as the film wants to have its cake and eat it, being on one hand an AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY-type family saga, laying bare horrible family skeletons; and a John Grisham legal procedural on the other.
There are undeniable pleasures along the way, in the scenes between Downey Jnr and Duvall, and Thornton flexes his sinister muscles the way he did in the FARGO remake; but the women characters in Hank’s life are largely ciphers, there to flatter his vanity or give his character an extra dimension (Downey Jr is one of the executive producers). And the landscapes and aerial panoramas, somewhat at odds with Hank’s contempt for the stifling Carlinville air, too often have the whiff of a car commercial.
Worst of all, THE JUDGE’s all-important if predictable ‘closure’ takes forever, the sure sign of an unwieldy plot. The jury has pronounced, the gavel has been banged, the case is over. Yet loose ends need to be tied up at laborious length as Hank makes peace with most of Carlinville’s characters, all of whom seem to be due, so to speak, their day in court. Not just one, but several hugs too far.
httpvh://youtu.be/LRHXo8_PeZM