When I was putting together my early Oscar predictions one of the films I wasn’t quite sure how seriously I should take it was David Dobkin‘s The Judge, a film starring Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Duvall in which Downey plays big city lawyer Hank Palmer, returning to his childhood home where his estranged father, the town’s judge (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.
Dobkin is best known for films such as Wedding Crashers, Fred Claus and The Change-Up, so now is the time to wonder if he can pull off a drama and if so, do we have a possible film to root for in the awards race this year?
The film is set for an October 10 release, which leads me to believe we might be seeing it in Telluride, Toronto, Venice or some combination of those three festivals if Warner Bros. has any confidence in it, because a solid festival premiere could do big things for a film as this where the talent in front of the camera is obvious, but Dobkin could give the awards race an easy talking point.
