The Judge (2014)

Directed by David Dobkin

Hot-shot criminal lawyer Hank Palmer (Robert Downey Jr.) leaves his Chicago law-practice, his long-suffering, newly-unfaithful wife, and his sweetly precocious daughter (Emma Tremblay) to return to his family home in small town Indiana for his mother’s funeral.

There he is greeted with wariness by brothers Glen (Vincent D’Onofrio) and Dale (Jeremy Strong), and calculated coldness by his father, Judge Joseph Palmer (Robert Duvall). We see Judge Palmer dispensing justice in his courthouse with a mixture of humour and sagacity, but he has none of this for his visiting prodigal son. Hank can’t wait to leave, but on the night of the funeral, a white-trash former convict is run over, and the next day Judge Palmer is arrested for murder.

Thus the stage is set for Hank to defend his father, and for long suppressed emotions to rise, combine and combust. Judge Palmer may be literally under arrest, but almost every major character in the movie is, to some degree, arrested. For Dale, it is arrested development; for Glen, the agony of a promising baseball career stifled by a car accident that Hank caused. Lovely bar owner Samantha (a radiant Vera Farmiga) holds a 500-watt candle for her high-school sweetheart Hank, and even the out-of-town prosecuting lawyer (an underused Billy Bob Thornton) turns out to be nursing a grudge against Hank.

Dobkin, previously best known for comedies such as Wedding Crashers and Fred Claus, leavens the drama with humour, though the transitions are sometimes a little abrupt. For the most part, he keeps sentimentality under control, but the ending goes on for too long; and he is a little heavy handed with his symbolism (a rotating chair seems to scream “What goes around, comes around”, while the simple son and his archive of soundless 8mm home movies speak of simpler times).

The story is a little contrived (it’s hard to believe that Hank’s mother would have allowed this father-son enmity to fester for so long), and tension is maintained by some dubious plot devices (the late discovery of some crucial CCTV evidence is particularly unbelievable).

But these are relatively minor grumbles – the movie is more than saved by some wonderful performances by the leads, particularly Downey Jr., who transforms from angry and arrogant big-town, amoral attorney to someone finally with a real stake in a trial.

Very good – nearly great.