FILM REVIEW The Judge

GENERATION GAME?Robert Downey Jnr and Robert Duvall star in ‘The Judge’.

In the name of the father

Cinema

Ciara Galvin

ROBERT Downey Jnr plays the same role in the majority of his films. The self-assured, smooth talking character, à la Ironman and Sherlock Holmes. This isn’t a gripe I have about his choice of roles – in fact, I quite like the cocky characters he has taken on. He’s the guy that would get away with saying something rude to your mother at a family occasion.  

In David Dobkins’s film ‘The Judge’, Downey Jr plays hotshot lawyer Hank Palmer, who is known for getting his guilty clients off all manner of charges.

Palmer answers a call in the courtroom in the middle of a trial and is told his mother has passed away, and so ensues a journey into his past.

His daughter asks him if ‘Grandpa’ is dead too, because ‘Grandma is dead’, to which Palmer replies, ‘No, Grandpa Palmer is dead to me, it’s a figure of speech’. Immediately we realise that Palmer’s relationship with his father is tenuous, to say the least.

After visiting the funeral home, he attends the local court where his father, Joseph ‘Judge’ Palmer, played by Robert Duvall, is presiding over the local court sitting, even though his wife has just passed away.

The first interaction between Palmer and Judge is at the family home. Judge hugs colleagues and thanks them for attending, yet when Palmer approaches, just a handshake is exchanged.

While Palmer is home he links up with childhood sweetheart Samantha played by Vera Farmiga from ‘Up in the Air’ and this provides an interesting sub plot throughout.

Fed up with his father’s behaviour when he and his brothers ask how their father’s car became damaged, Palmer leaves for his flight home and says he will never return again.

But soon, he is off a flight and returning home as Judge has been arrested by police for questioning after a body has been found.

It turns out Judge had previously given the dead man a chance in court, after he threatened a 16-year-old girl and fired a gun near her home. Judge sentenced him to only 30 days in prison for the crime. After he was released, he drowned the girl and Judge sentenced him to 20 years in prison.

Everything is stacking up against Judge as the man’s blood is found on his car and Palmer is sure a court of law can find him guilty of murder. Judge is suffering memory loss due to chemotherapy and cannot remember hitting the man.

The fraught father/son relationship means that instead of hiring Palmer to defend him, Judge hires a dimwit lawyer who has never won a serious case. Soon the dimwit lawyer steps down from the case after many times outside the court vomiting from nerves and Palmer takes over.

The film is similar to those adapted from John Grisham novels, but without much of the tension. And unlike many courtroom thrillers, The Judge has more than just the trial to follow, Palmer is trying to reconnect with his family, his old love, and most heartbreaking is coming to terms with minding his father who we discover is battling stage four colon cancer.

The once mighty Judge is reduced to a withered man crawling to a toilet following chemotherapy while his son must look on and deal with the possibility that his father could spend his remaining days behind bars.

A lot of things come out of the woodwork right until the end which explains the complex relationship between Palmer and his father.

Poignantly in the dying moments of the 140 minute film, when Palmer asks his father who his favourite lawyer, Judge responds: ‘You are, I choose you’. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but judge it for yourself.

Rating 9 out of 10