A film that has pretensions to be a novel, THE JUDGE is a drawn out case of filial indemnity and felonious intention.

Robert Downey Jnr is a hotshot big city attorney making a homecoming for the funeral of his mother.
To say he is estranged from his father, Robert Duvall, the judge of the title, is a major understatement.

The night of the funeral, the judge, goes grocery shopping and hits a cyclist, the victim being an unrepentant recidivist who the judge showed a leniency that resulted in a willful and wicked act.

The judge swears he has no memory of the collision. He also swears that he has not fallen off the wagon. And further swears that a local lawyer will defend him and not his hotshot son.

But when a silver maned, silver tongued prosecutor sweeps onto the scene in the shape of Billy Bob Thornton, and the local lad can’t keep his lunch down let alone his legal brief, the prodigal son steps up to the plate.

Part courtroom drama, part family saga, THE JUDGE falls between the two, with Downey’s disabled brother and his cutesy daughter relationships played with too much Disneyesque saccharine.

Yet there is no denying the screen appeal of the two leads. Downey has the smart ass swagger and delivery down pat for this particular character, although the shtick could easily be that of Tony Stark in Ironman.
And Robert Duvall, whose screen career started back with To Kill a Mockingbird, a story that is cited in this film, shows he’s still got the acting chops a half a century later.

Downey and Duvall starred in another courtroom drama some years ago, Robert Altman’s The Gingerbread Man, which was a much more satisfying film.

For most of its two and a half hour running time, THE JUDGE delivers, but the jury may be out regarding its success overall. Still a worthy case for you to make your own verdict.