Judge, The (2014) [Blu-ray]
Drama

Tagline: Defend your Honor.

Big city lawyer Hank Palmer (Robert Downey Jr.) returns to his childhood home where his estranged father, the town's judge (Robert Duvall), is suspected of murder. He sets out to discover the truth and along the way reconnects with the family he walked away from years before.

Storyline: Hank Palmer is a successful defense attorney in Chicago, who is getting a divorce. When His brother calls with the news that their mother has died, Hank returns to his childhood home to attend the funeral. Despite the brittle bond between Hank and the Judge, Hank must come to his father's aid and defend him in court. Here, Hank discovers the truth behind the case, which binds together the dysfunctional family and reveals the struggles and secrecy of the family. Written by Warren D'Souza

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Kenneth Brown, January 28, 2015 -- The Judge wears its heart on its sleeve. And lungs. Its guts. Liver. Pancreas. It embraces full emotional embowelment, and does so with increasing regularity. More ambitious than your standard genre fare -- much more, overwrought and bloated as it is -- director David Dobkin's melo-legal-drama goes for broke, frequently lumbering in and out of the courtroom, shuffling down one too many small-town side streets, and meandering from heartaching start to tear-jerking finish with the grace of a 500-pound bailiff on lunch break. And yet a great deal of the film works. The performances are universally excellent (minus Dax Shepard, good God), even when Nick Schenk and Bill Dubuque's script over-reaches and under-delivers. The familial tension, in-fighting and alienation is handled with a careful touch, and borders on poignant at times. And there are moments of profound pain and sweetness; scenes in which the screenwriters' computer keys stop clicking and clacking and something resembling authenticity steps forward and takes command. Yes, it's flawed and overly sentimental. Sometimes unbearably so. Yes, with some invasive editing and polishing, it would be a different film. A better film. And yes, it's the sort of rainy night Redbox schlock lonely hearts and empty nesters consider cinematic catharsis. But it's not a complete waste, particularly with Robert Duvall and Robert Downey Jr. infusing their roles as feuding father and son with such sincerity and soul.

Robert Downey Jr. stars as big city lawyer Hank Palmer, who returns to his childhood home in Highland Park, Illinois where his estranged father, the town's hard-nose judge, Joseph (Robert Duvall), is accused of hitting and killing a recently paroled murderer with his car. The judge insists that he doesn't remember anything, though, call his once sparkling reputation into question and luring no-nonsense prosecutor Dwight Dickham (Billy Bob Thorton) to the case. As Hank sets out to discover the truth and defend his father in the courtroom, he tackles decades-old issues with his father, reconnects with his brothers Glen (Vincent D'Onofrio) and Dale (Jeremy Strong), and reunites with the high school sweetheart (Vera Farmiga) he abandoned years earlier.

Fun fact: The Judge earned an impressive Cinemascore from theatrical audiences -- an A- to be exact -- and that warrants some quick discussion. (We have the time. I'm pretty sure my intro made my feelings on the film abundantly clear.) By contrast, Rotten Tomatoes, or rather critics at large, slapped The Judge with a 47% "Rotten" rating. Why the disparity? Critics and audiences have long stood at opposite ends of the theater, so to speak, but rarely to such an extreme. Reviewers are pretentious and out of touch, cry the moviegoers. Bah! Moviegoers are too easy to woo and even easier to please, bark the reviewers. But the reality isn't that divisive. Take a moment and watch The Judge's theatrical trailer. Seriously, all of it. I'll wait.

Everyone back? Settled in? Let's cut to the chase then. No one, and I mean no one, could watch that trailer and be surprised by anything they encounter in The Judge. The sliding tone, the rhythms, the jarring shifts from light comedy to weepy family tear-jerker to courtroom drama, the style of the performances and screenwriting, the lump guaranteed to rise in your throat, the tears sure to sear the corners of your eyes, the heartache, the redemption, the mystery, the legal wranglings, the neatly packaged movie quotes, all right there, in one digestible, perfectly representative two-minutes and twenty-three seconds. Of course The Judge received an A- from audiences. The studio did an amazing job of tailoring its marketing to attract a very specific target demographic, and it worked.

There are people who consider The Judge one of the best movies of the year, and they're right. It is one of the best movies of the year... for that target demographic. When trailers ditch Hollywood's oh-so-common practices of moviegoer deception -- the marketing trickery and sleight of hand used to boost box office returns -- audiences are happier. Cinemascores rise. Critics will still grumble, shake their heads, and use words like "cliché" and "conventional" until they're blue in the cheeks. (To interject, I would have used the word "cliché" at least a half-dozen times in a lengthy dissection of the film.) But audiences will pay their $10, laugh, sob and cheer for 141 minutes, and thank the studio for the privilege.

So where does that leave us? The Judge is as formulaic as they come; so formulaic that it lifts the formula of at least three different genre pics. It's the sort of movie that will never appeal to all viewers, never garner critical acclaim, and never find its way onto the awards docket. But that's where an honest trailer becomes a godsend. I don't have to watch The Judge to know it's not for me. It's right there in the trailer, confirmed by critics, and hailed only by a small but vocal minority. I also didn't have to watch the entire film to know it's precisely the kind of film my mother would adore, that my sister-in-law would expend a box of tissues watching, and that several of our dearest family friends would revisit multiple times, coming away more satisfied with each viewing. Personal Taste is obviously the culprit, followed by co-conspirators Expectation and Familiarity. But there's nothing wrong with that. Want to know if The Judge is for you? For once, a trailer is more interested in assembling the right audience than in trying to fool everyone into thinking it's the next groundbreaking, award-winning modern classic.

The Judge bites off more than it can chew and spends the majority of its runtime gnawing on melodramatic gristle. Some of you will love every clichéd, tear-jerking, heartfelt minute, even if it can't decide whether it wants to be a dysfunctional family drama, a courtroom thriller, a redemption story or something else entirely. Others won't be so easily manipulated or lured into its web of heartstrings, having grown tired of seeing it all a hundred times before. Fortunately, Robert Duvall, Robert Downey Jr. and the film's (mostly) outstanding cast help the movie rise above its script, at least enough to fully satisfy its target demographic. Cinemascore says A-. Rotten Tomatoes says F. I say it's a solid C. But watch the trailer and go with your gut. Warner's Blu-ray release is much better, with a strong video presentation, terrific DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track, and a decent selection of special features.

[CSW] -2.2- This is actually a very good film from a production standpoint. The problem I had was that I couldn't seem to develop a vested interest in any of the characters. Even though the acting was brilliant, the directing good, and the cinematography good even for the wrong location (New England locations substituting for Indiana), without caring for the characters it all became meaningless. I found the "whole not equal to the sum of its parts" and at 2 hours and 20 minutes it kind of dragged out the story line. I'm sorry that I couldn't seem to care if any of the characters lived or died, but I didn't. If you find that you care it will be worth it, if not it is pretty much a waste of time.
[V4.0-A4.5] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box.


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