As an estranged father and son, Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Duvall make predictable legal drama The Judge into something worth watching.
Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Duvall in The Judge.
Claire Folger, Warner Bros./Village Roadshow Films
Robert Downey Jr. plays a charming asshole in The Judge. Robert Duvall plays a lovable grump. These are developments as expected as the fact that, in a movie that combines legal and family turmoil, major father-son secrets will come spilling out in a dramatic courtroom scene. The Judge, directed by David Dobkin (The Change-Up) and now open in theaters, isn't the kind of movie that aims for surprises. But not every film needs to break the mold, and The Judge's low-key pleasures come from how it unfolds with unhurried familiarity, content to let the performances from its two leads and fine supporting cast carry an otherwise predictable story to a conclusion guaranteed to jerk some tears.
And hell, Downey as a slippery fast-talker with the heart of gold and Duvall as a grizzled hardass whose own heart also turns out to be at least 24K are roles the two actors have gotten very good at. Alone, though, they can threaten to slide into caricature. Downey's introduction, for instance, finds his high-flying defense attorney character Hank Palmer being confronted in the men's room by a prosecutor who asks how he sleeps at night, and he answers, basically, that he cozies up on the bed of money he gets from his guilty clients. It's a screwball sequence that could be replaced with a title card reading "RDJ acts sassy — you already now how this goes." Duvall's gruffness, similarly, works best when he has someone to push off of, and who can stand up to him — without that, he can seem just an old man glowering to himself.
Warner Bros.
It's the pair's scenes together that make The Judge, a drama that could pass as a forgotten remnant from John Grisham's '90s movies heyday, work. Hank is, as his high school girlfriend Samantha (Vera Farmiga) puts it, "a boy from Indiana who's going to do whatever he has to do to pretend that's not true." His efforts have included his hotshot Chicago career, a swanky house, a nice car, and a crumbling marriage that's yielded a daughter (Emma Tremblay) he adores. It takes the death of his mother to bring him home to his two brothers and the dad he hasn't spoken to for years, Judge Joe Palmer (Duvall), who rules over the legal doings of the town with a paternal firmness.
Hank curses over having to return to his childhood home like it's the pit of hell, but Carlinville, Indiana, is portrayed as a living Norman Rockwell painting, literal kids with fishing poles on the street, headed to the scenic river on which the town is perched. The hardship's really in having to see Joe again — Joe, who at the funeral shakes his son's hand in the midst of giving everyone else hugs, and who has no apparent interest in what he's been up to for all this time. Neither Hank nor Joe is willing to give ground, but when Joe ends up accused of murder after a hit-and-run that night that he doesn't remember, Hank realizes he needs to be there to defend him.
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