The Judge (2014)

Directed by David Dobkin. Starring Robert Downey Jr., Robert Duvall, Vincent D’Onofrio, Jeremy Strong, Vera Farmiga, Billy Bob Thornton, Dax Shepard, Ken Howard, Emma Tremblay, Leighton Meester, David Krumholtz, Grace Zabriskie. [R]

Don’t you hate it when a cynical, morally-compromised protagonist gives way to ill-supported conscience rediscovery and mawkishness? Or when a courtroom drama presents a crime and case so unconvincingly that you’re left waiting impatiently for another shoe to drop but never does? Or when character definition and relationships are so rote, the inherent drama of a murder trial never takes hold, and you’re left counting all the contrivances, clichés, and cheap theatrics? For example(s): the co-counsel (Shepard) who throws up every time he has to enter a courtroom, a prosecutor (Thornton, in a thankless role) who reveals he has a history with the defense attorney halfway through the case, the judge name plates being swapped out after the courtroom is already filled on the first day, the hero having a precocious daughter (Tremblay), the hero’s old flame (Farmiga) being magically available despite being probably the most attractive woman in a small town without a lot of options for single men, the hero necking with a bartender (Meester) who turns out to be said old flame’s daughter (and possibly his, too), stunning revelations and therapeutic healing taking place in the middle of witness testimony, and so on. Downey is the slick big-city attorney who goes home for his mother’s funeral and sticks around to defend his estranged father (Duvall), a tough, legacy-minded judge, after he’s accused of the hit-and-run murder of a man he sentenced to twenty years in prison (the narrow backstory of which is handled solely through somber exposition). If this plot description sounds like an afterthought in the review, that’s because it’s treated as an afterthought by the filmmakers. Just an opportunity for Downey and Duvall to do what’s expected of them, acting-wise—they’re fine, of course, but so what? So what to the whole strained, insincere, overlong affair. Director Dobkin earned co-story credit (surprising, since the narrative has all the earmarks of an adaptation of a paperback potboiler you pick up before boarding an airplane).

35/100