Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Robert Duvall, Vera Farmiga, Billy Bob Thornton, Vincent D’Onofrio, Jeremy Strong, Dax Shepard, Leighton Meester, Ken Howard, Emma Tremblay, Balthazar Getty, David Krumholtz, Grace Zabriskie, Denis O’Hare, Sarah Lancaster, Lonnie Farmer, Mark Kiely, Matt Riedy, Jeremy Holm, Catherine Cummings, Tamara Hickey, Paul-Emile Cendron, Ian Nelson, Frank Ridley, Carol S. Austin, Ras Enoch McCurdie.
There have been so many court room dramas in the history of film that one more surely shouldn’t make much of an impression in the overall scheme of cinema. Played out in lesser hands, The Judge might have been just another also ran, a shadow in which to pass pleasantly through for a couple of hours and then move onto the next film the following week. However such things don’t always go the way they suggest and The Judge is a law unto itself delivers a damning verdict on the way that the law can be perceived and administered.
When Hank Palmer comes home for his mother’s funeral, the worms have not just been let out of the can, they are wriggling to freedom and attacking any bird stupid enough to put their beaks within a two yard area of them. The fall out of many years sees an estranged father and son, both successful and proud of what they have achieved both at each other’s throats for mistakes made and served. When death visits, it’s never just the once, it comes knocking again and again till the situation rights itself but the law must be seen to be beyond reproach at all times.
For Robert Downey Jr. the appeal of portraying the likes of Tony Stark in the Avengers/Iron Man franchises and the mastermind of criminal investigation in the equally successful Sherlock Holmes films is what drives his fans to the cinema in their droves but the true measure of the actor’s ability shines out when placed into a film of quality rather than of quantity.
Like Mr. Downey’s performance in Chaplin, which arguably was the finest film of that year’s releases or even the way he captured the essence perfectly in Elton John’s I Want Love video, his performance as black sheep but brilliant lawyer Hank Palmer was astonishing. To perform with and against in some of the bitterest family scenes on screen in years the legendary Robert Duvall, in perhaps his truthfully exceptional moment since Apocalypse Now, was a feat of acting sincerity. The mutual respect was evident between the two actors but it was superbly masked by the rage and range of emotions that crept out of the family closet like a dripping, bulbous and pus filled monster announcing its self to anyone who dared look at it in the eye.
Who is to judge when a justice can no longer see the line between openness and honesty and the fading blackness that comes with eventual decline? The Judge is a film of exceptional quality, delivered by a great script, four great leading actors in Robert Duvell, Billy Bob Thornton, Vincent D’Onofrio and Robert Downey Jr. and held together in a court room scene to rival anything the greats of its genre, such as To Kill A Mockingbird, 12 Angry Men, A Few Good Men or Inherit The Wind, can muster.
The Judge is a must see, justice and praise must be served.
Ian D. Hall