Without the performances of Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Duvall, The Judge would probably end up being a film I would have dismissed outright. Director David Dobkin (Wedding Crashers, The Change-Up) is best known for his comedies, but here he’s directing a two hour and twenty minute, Indiana-set, father-son melodrama, working with a script from Nick Schenk (Gran Torino) and Bill Dubuque that was in serious need of trimming from the start. Nevermind the fact the film is largely generic, it’s just too long, overstuffed, often repeating scenes and unnecessarily wasting time to add another layer, merely for the sake of drama rather than storytelling.
To be fair, Dobkin isn’t completely out of his element, he just seems somewhat unsure of himself. The Judge is intensely formulaic, hitting beats at just the “right” time, be they comedic or dramatic, you know something meant for a laugh or a tear is just around the corner as every ten minutes the drama begins to fade only to be jolted back to life with a laugh or a gasp. Helping matters in the midst of the fluff are Downey Jr. and Duvall, telling the story of Hank (Downey Jr.), a New York lawyer who hadn’t been home to see his father (Duvall), a small town Indiana judge, in twenty years until learning of his mother’s death.
Back home for only a few days, Hank is on the plane and ready to head back to the Big Apple when he learns his father has hit and killed a man, a man his father had years earlier sentenced to prison on a murder charge. The only catch, he doesn’t remember doing it, and Hank will eventually be responsible for his father’s legal future.
That, however, is only the main story, within this simple tale are a myriad of side stories including an upcoming divorce, old girlfriends, the daughter of an old girlfriend, the autistic brother, the brother that could have been a professional baseball player and the daughter that’s never met her grandfather. It’s just too much for one movie and while the running time would suggest each plot strand gets its due, characters will frequently disappear and some seemingly forgotten altogether, while stories of the past continually bubble to the surface only to never be fully explained.
The saving grace, making this a film that’s easily tolerable, though instantly forgettable, are Downey and Duvall. Downey has mastered the “puppy dog eyes” reaction shot, you believe the emotions he’s portraying, whether it’s frustration, anger or fear and it doesn’t hurt he’s acting opposite Duvall whose stubbornness as an aging, respected small town judge is spot on. A bathroom scene between the two is the best the film has to offer as it begins in sadness and ends in laughter. It feels honest and it does so because it comes from a place of honesty, which makes comparing to the rest of the feature fruitless.
Dobkin seems to have gone to the Steven Spielberg school of lighting as white light dominates the background of damn near every indoor shot. Then again, perhaps the credit there is due to frequent Spielberg collaborator, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski. Either way, it felt like a cheap knock-off, sort of like Thomas Newman‘s uninspired score, which is immediately recognizable as Newman, a composer I truly love, who really seems to have thrown in the towel on this one before he even started. Scenes that don’t need an ounce of music behind them are layered with it, again suggesting Dobkin lacked the confidence to just let the drama play out as performed.
The supporting cast is mostly window dressing if not laughable. Billy Bob Thornton plays the prosecuting attorney and at one moment he slams open one of those collapsible drinking cups as if he just dropped knowledge that would even make God shudder, but all it did was make the audience laugh. I also have to add a small bit of compassion for Vincent D’Onofrio as Hank’s sad sack, overweight older brother. If this is the kind of type-casting D’Onofrio can expect in films moving forward it’s a bit sad as he’s let himself go physically and won’t be good for much else soon enough.
Suffice to say, The Judge is an adequate film, but hardly a film anyone will be talking about 24 hours after seeing it. Dobkin may have a future in drama, but if so he’s going to need to gain a little more confidence in his work, what to include in a film and what to cut. This screenplay could have been chopped by 40 pages or so, trimming plot threads that go nowhere, cutting things down and getting to the meat of the story and controlling it rather than letting it control him.
