The Judge

The Judge 

 The Judge isn't a great movie or even good, but fair. Sometimes, the movie comes across as being boring. It certainly feels like someone's pet project than really a compelling story. However, the acting rises the movie above its middling script. Somewhere, there is a better courtroom drama lurking in the shadows. The movie just fails to discover it.

Judge Joseph Palmer (Robert Duvall) is a hard but fair judge in a small town in Indiana. His middle son(Robert Downey Jr.) is a big city lawyer that has to come home for his mother's funeral. Judge Palmer finds himself being accused of killing a man that he sentence years ago. The lawyer son has to defend his father in the trial, while putting aside his hatred.

Seeing Duvall and Downey Jr. going at it is a real treat. You get the sense that they really do have some bad blood between them. Downey was a good choice for the fasting talking lawyer. He's probably the best thing in the movie, and he keeps the movie going when the script stalls. Some of the other supporting cast isn't as breakthrough.

The movie just doesn't get over its mundane pacing and non-scenes to be as compelling as it wants to be. On the other hand, I like how the movie does give each character some flaws. Downey's character cheats on his wife, and his marriage is in shambles. However, he does do the right thing in defending his father. The judge has a history with the victim and that doesn't help him.

Also, the movie does evoke a little bit of Elizabethtown and that's not a good thing. Like that movie, it tries to pull at your emotional strings at the end and it just comes across as false. So, the mundane script and the falsehood. Downey and Duvall do elavate the script somewhat, but not enough.

Grade: C- 

 Robert: "I am Iron Man."

Old Man Robert just realized he didn't pick up his bag of prunes at the store and he forgot to wears pants...