The Judge - 3 stars

Robert Downey, Jr. plays Hank Palmer, a hot shot, big city lawyer.  His mom dies and he has to go home to Small Town, Missouri (or wherever it is) and face his dad (Robert Duvall).  His dad is a well-respected judge in the town, and the two of them hate each other.  When his dad is accused of murder, Hank has to convince his father to take him on as his attorney.

This movie is trying to be several things at once.  Most of the time, it’s a dysfunctional family drama.  From their first scene together, we can tell the relationship between Hank and his father is not good.  But then his father is on trial, and we meet the slick prosecuting attorney, Dwight Dickham (Billy Bob Thornton).  At this point, the movie becomes a courtroom drama.  Hank is also dealing with his ending marriage and pending custody battle over his daughter.  The movie also finds time for a little romance between Hank and his high school girlfriend, Samantha (Vera Farmiga).

The first 20 minutes or so of the movie are pretty rough.  It feels sloppily edited, and I thought the trailer did a much better job of conveying the emotional beats that the movie is going for.  In fact, if you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve seen the movie.  The only things you’re waiting for in the movie are why do Hank and his dad hate each other so much, and will his dad be convicted of murder.

But the reason to see this movie is the performances.  It’s a lot of fun to see Robert Downey, Jr. and Robert Duvall bicker and argue the way they do.  As the movie progresses and we learn more about the pain they’ve gone through, the scenes get deeper and more intense.  There’s some real powerful stuff going on in their scenes together.

Besides those actors, Vincent D’Onofrio does a good job as Hank’s brother, Glen, who’s kind of the anchor keeping the family together.  And Dax Shepard gets some laughs as a lawyer / antique dealer who’s not at all up to the challenge of a murder trial. 

The movie is 2 ½ hours long, and it feels it.  I think it would have been a good idea to cut at least one of the storylines out, or cut it down.  The most important story in the movie is Hank’s relationship with his father, and I really didn’t care that much how the trial turns out.  And there’s a really unnecessary scene at the end where we see Hank back in the same bathroom he was in at the start of the movie, having a conversation with the same lawyer.  The scene is showing us how much his character has changed by the end of the movie, and it was too on-the-nose. 

But despite my reservations, I enjoyed the movie enough to recommend it.