Movies

Standard Of Review: Judging The Judge

Ultimately, The Judge is a perfectly agreeable, yet very forgettable, legal drama.

By  
on

When sitting down to watch the 2014 legal drama The Judge, all I could think about was the surprising and perhaps undeserving Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination for Robert Duvall. As a movie buff and an Academy Awards fan, I was incensed at some of this year’s Oscar snubs; in particular, David Oyelowo, Ava DuVernay, and Bradford Young should have been nominated for Selma, and The Lego Movie should have been nominated for Best Animated Feature (I guess that “everything is not awesome”). I seethed with the thought that Duvall received an undeserved nomination while some of my favorites were left out (despite being in different categories). However, after seeing The Judge, I realized that I had pre-judged (hilarious pun intended) Duvall’s deservedness, as Duvall gives a great performance, despite the film being ultimately mediocre and forgettable.

The Judge stars Robert Downey, Jr. as big-time Chicago criminal defense attorney Hank Palmer. After his mother passes away, Hank returns to his hometown in rural Indiana for the funeral and feuds with his father Judge Joseph Palmer, a cantankerous old man who makes Hank and his two brothers (Vincent D’Onofrio, Jeremy Strong) refer to him as “Judge.” Hank cannot wait to return to Chicago, but before he can leave, the Judge is suspected by the police of killing a local man who had previously brutally murdered his girlfriend after the Judge gave him a light sentence. After the Judge is arrested and charged with the crime, Hank requests to defend him, despite the Judge’s reservations. The Judge chafes at Hank’s slick legal style, preferring instead to hire local attorney C.P. Kennedy (Dax Shepard, who is portrayed as a buffoonish bumpkin who vomits before every court appearance akin to Jamie Foxx’s character from Any Given Sunday throwing up before every football game). But Hank soon realizes that the Judge might not actually know if he murdered the victim, due to the Judge’s medical infirmities.

Downey is perfectly adequate, but he is basically playing a lawyerly variation on Tony Stark. This is a problem that has plagued most of his recent roles, as Downey typically plays a confident, (usually) affluent, self-centered, sarcastic character (in addition to The Judge and obviously the Iron Man and The Avengers films, I noticed this problem in Due Date and the Sherlock Holmes films). Downey plays this persona really well, but I would like to see him take some different roles every once in a while. Downey should look back to his role choices from 2005-2008, where he took parts as interesting or different characters in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (perhaps the most underrated film of the 2000s and one of the only films that is actually improved by voiceover narration), A Scanner Darkly, Zodiac, and Tropic Thunder.

As I mentioned above, I can’t really complain about Duvall’s Academy Award nomination after seeing the film.  Duvall does an excellent job portraying a man who at first seems emotionally aloof, but is clearly scared of his own mortality. In the best scene in the movie (for both Duvall and Downey), Hank finds the Judge collapsed on the floor of the bathroom, and has to help clean fecal matter off the Judge. The scene goes from emotionally resonant to darkly comic as the Judge must quickly think of reasons why Hank’s young daughter should not enter the bathroom.

D’Onofrio is the best part of the supporting cast, playing the older brother in the Palmer family who has taken on the burden of keeping the family together after Hank left town. Vera Farmiga is charming (as usual) as Samantha Powell, Hank’s high school girlfriend who has stayed in their hometown all these years, though she does not have a lot to do (and having an adult character return to his or her hometown and reconnect with his or her former girlfriend/boyfriend (who has conveniently remained single) is a well-worn trope).

The biggest problem with the film is that it is way too long and overstuffed, as seemingly every character has an unnecessarily complicated backstory. I usually am in favor of introducing backstory in order to give dimension to characters, but this film contains so much that the film is weighed down by scene after scene of clunky exposition in which characters explain things that happened to them in the past. For example, I could have done without the completely extraneous soliloquy that prosecuting attorney Dwight Dickham (Billy Bob Thornton, for some reason) gives to Hank about something that happened to him in the past which provides the personal reason he is prosecuting the case.

Moreover, there are a number of scenes, especially in the middle of the film, that do not advance the plot and should have been trimmed for time. For example, there is an interminable scene between Hank and his daughter about the possibility of Hank divorcing his wife that lasted about as long as the Saturday Night Live 40th Anniversary Special. There are also several scenes pertaining to a very extraneous and downright bizarre subplot involving Leighton Meester and incest that is played for laughs (the less said about those scenes, the better).

Sponsored

Because I admit that I can sometimes be too critical, I want to cite one example of well-written exposition in The Judge. In the beginning of the film, the Judge chastises Hank for not backing into the driveway at the Judge’s house, and there are a few other scattered references to backing into the driveway. About halfway through the film, at the culmination of an argument between Hank and the Judge, Hank, despite driving at a high speed, backs into the driveway perfectly, parking his car mere inches from the garage. This series of extremely short scenes is much more effective in encapsulating the relationship between Hank and the Judge than the myriad of scenes where characters explain backstory.

Ultimately, The Judge is a perfectly agreeable, yet very forgettable, legal drama. If I can remember anything specific about this movie in six weeks, it will be a miracle on par with Jay and Jenna winning the trivia competition on this Tuesday’s episode of MTV’s The Challenge. And I can rest easy knowing that Duvall’s Academy Award nomination was not undeserved (though I of course believe that he should (and will) lose to J.K. Simmons from Whiplash).

Harry Graff is a litigation associate at a firm, but he spends days wishing that he was writing about film, television, literature, and pop culture instead of writing briefs. If there is a law-related movie, television show, book, or any other form of media that you would like Harry Graff to discuss, he can be reached at [email protected]. Be sure to follow Harry Graff on Twitter at @harrygraff19.

Sponsored

Topics

, , ,