THE JUDGE

The Judge

Grade: B

Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Robert Duvall, Jeremy Strong, Vincent D’Onofrio, Vera Farmiga, Dax Shepard, Billy Bob Thornton and Leighton Meester

Premise: A cynical Chicago defense attorney returns to his rural Indiana hometown and becomes an important figure when his elderly father is put on trial for murder.

Rated R for language, intense emotional content, sexual content, and some unsettling images

“Oscarbait” is a term movie people like to throw around this time of year. Its meaning is simple. Since the Academy Award/ “Oscar” nominations are announced early each year, the last few months of any given year usually play host to movies vying for nominations from Hollywood’s most prestigious award show. They’re released in the last few months before voting for the awards’ nominees begins in order to remain fresh in the minds of voters. Whether or not the movies were actually made with the intent of getting such recognition remains something of a mystery, but their content and the timing of their release are not. These movies—whether they boast potentially noteworthy plot, acting, writing, directing, aesthetic values, or some combination therein—are, by being released during the time in which voters are looking for quality, quite simply fishing for Oscar nominations. Hence, they’re Oscarbait.

The Judge is pure Oscarbait. Again, I can’t prove it was made just to try to win major recognition, but it certainly seems like the releasing studios are almost hoping for some notice. It was fairly-obvious from the movie’s trailer, which put the world on notice that it had four actors filling major roles whose names come attached the words “Academy Award Nominee” or “Academy Award Winner”. And then there’s the movie itself, which boasts enough material for at least half-a-dozen Oscar-nominated films. It doesn’t help that a lot of this material has been covered (many times, and sometimes recently) by better movies. The Judge isn’t a bad movie; it deserves some praise, and has the ability to touch many people. But it’s a little too long, too overstuffed, and trying to feel important to be a truly authentic, powerful motion picture.

I can’t help it. To further illustrate this point, I will put numbers throughout my plot synopsis below to indicate elements in The Judge that are indicative of the kinds of elements that get movies award notice, or the kinds of movies that have actually gotten award notice.

Plot

It’s said that slick, motor-mouthed Chicago defense attorney Hank Palmer (Robert Downey Jr.) doesn’t have a conscience (1). His record of ducking trial with his cases indicates as much. He’s got money and a name people in the business know, but he also has a crumbling marriage (2), which is likely to endanger the amount of time he gets to spend with his adorable daughter Lauren (Emma Tremblay)(3). When his mother unexpectedly passes (4) he leaves the big city to return to the provincial Indiana town in which he grew up (5). Back home, he’s reunited with his big brother (Vincent D’Onofrio), a former rising-star athlete who was permanently crippled by a car accident, which lost him a promising future (6). He’s also reunited with his little brother (Jeremy Strong), who’s something of an obsessive technology whiz (7) despite suffering from a mental handicap (8). The brothers have often wondered why Hank ran off for the big city and rarely visits (9), but their curiosity is kid stuff compared to the decades-old grudge nursed by Hank’s father Joseph (Robert Duvall), from whom Hank has long been estranged (10). Having served as the town judge for 42 years, Joseph is a well-respected, even beloved, figure in the small town (11).

But Joseph—who’s hiding Stage 4 cancer from the world (12)—is threatened with losing all good favor with the townsfolk (13), when he comes home one night from a drive on a stormy night with a man’s blood on his car (14). The man, a convicted felon with a violent past, died after being struck by the car while riding his bike. Joseph—called “Judge” by his sons and most of the townspeople—can’t remember exactly what happened (15), whether that’s due to possible dementia, mental lapses caused by his secret chemotherapy treatment, or his potentially having fallen off the wagon from his decades-old sobriety (16). When the town D.A. (Dax Shepard), a kind but nervous young man with a law degree from a no-name school realizes he can’t quite cut it (17) when the old man’s case goes to court, there’s only one man for the job. Though Joseph is loathe to use him, enter Hank as his new DA (18).

Thus, while battling plying questions about his failing marriage, hosting his daughter for a brief hometown stay (19), and contending with his father’s failing health and hair-raising insults, Hank tries to prepare his defense for a case that, to some, seems open and shut (20). “Some” includes steely-eyed prosecutor Dwight Dickham (Billy Bob Thornton), who swears he’s going to ruin Joseph’s reputation and have him locked away for murder (21). Meanwhile, outside the courtroom, Hank is reunited with his high school sweetheart, now a diner matron (Vera Farmiga)(22), and experiences alarming discoveries about the parentage of that former flame’s cutie-pie grown daughter (Leighton Meester)(23).

What Doesn’t Work?

Well, other than being just a bit cliché….

Ah, I hate being hard on a sincere, well-intentioned movie like The Judge, but with so many melodramatic, seen-it-before plot elements, it often feels like either a polished movie from the Hallmark Channel or a Nicholas Sparks adaptation (come to think of it, those two types aren’t really all that different). While the estranged father/son dynamic, the small town homecoming and the murder trial are all clearly broadcast in the trailer, the smaller elements—the mentally-handicapped sibling, the late-act cancer diagnosis, and the potential rekindled romance—are all a "surprise", and are all unavoidably indicative of Sparks’ soapy, “important” style. Also, what with attempting to touch on all these elements, The Judge feels way too long and drawn out, up to and including the most not-the-real-ending scenes I can remember in one movie since The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

My shortest diagnosis: The Judge is a polished Hallmark Channel movie.

What Works?

There’s no denying this movie’s pedigree where its actors are concerned. In fact, perhaps the only elements that lift this movie out of the same league as Sparks adaptations/Hallmark fare are the leading performances by Robert Downey Jr., and Robert Duvall. As the lead who’s in nearly every scene, Downey Jr. doesn’t tread much new ground (his early scenes are easily-reminiscent of his Tony Stark from the Iron Man films), but later scenes show him add an edge of steel to his wise-cracking motor-mouth. One of the most watchable actors in the business, Downey Jr., has some surprises up his sleeve this time. He has to be at the top of his game, too, to go head-to-head with Robert Duvall. As everyone knows, Duvall brings gravity to all his late-career curmudgeons, naturally infusing them with humanity, emotion, and, when required, twinkly warmth, but what stands out is that, at 83, he can still blow a gasket like nobody’s business. Whether in boiling-over spouts of bitterness and old hurts released in his kitchen or a few of the most riled courtroom confrontations since A Few Good Men, Duvall brings a staggering force to his character’s eruptions, convincingly portraying an old man who backs down from no one, least of all the middle son who disappointed him.

The two primaries are so fine that, at times, The Judge manages the swagger of a truly Great movie. It happens when Downey Jr. and Duvall are at each other throats (at one point, they almost literally are).

Despite a large cast, none of the other principles have anything approaching that same dimension, which is a shame when you have the likes of Vera Farmiga and Billy Bob Thornton (both previously nominated for Academy Awards for their acting) on hand. Both are solid, albeit in cookie cutter roles, her as the old flame with the heart of gold any man would love to come home to at the end of the day—let alone after 25 years—and him as the supremely-confident prosecutor who smells blood. You wish they each had more screen time.

Content

Cut the movie’s 15-20 F-words, and The Judge would be a fine PG-13 film. There are a few innuendos and a pair of heated make-out scenes, but the scenes most likely to affect audiences depict an aging character who’s starting to lose control of his bodily functions, whether that’s his memory, his temper, or, in arguably the film’s most wrenching scene, his bowels. Overall, there’s not much material here that will offend, and, given the wealth of domestic storylines, many audience members will be touched and able to relate.

Bottom Line

My shortest diagnosis: The Judge is a polished Hallmark movie. While a whole raft of clichés and half-baked subplots puts one in mind of Nicholas Sparks' well-meaning but corny dribble, the movie is overall solid, mostly by virtue of terrific leading performances from Robert Downey Jr., and Robert Duvall. I wouldn’t expect to see this movie on many end-of-the-year awards lists (it’s a little too cliché for that) but it’s a decent R-rated alternative to some of the darker flicks in theaters right now.

The Judge (2014)

Directed by David Dobkin
Written by Nick Schenk and Bill Dubuque
Rated R
Length: 141 minutes