#TheJudge, #HollywoodEnglishFilmMovieReview #johnsonThomas Rating: * * *

#TheJudge, #HollywoodEnglishFilmMovieReview #johnsonThomas Rating: * * *

#Picks&Piques/SnippetFilmReviews/JohnsonThomas17thOct2014

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#Picks&Piques/SnippetFilmReviews/JohnsonThomas17th Oct2014

#BestReleases/FilmsThisWeek/17thOct2014JohnsonThomas

#TheJudge(English) Rating: * *  *  An unabashedly adult & a steadfastly old-fashioned drama. Part Oedipal family saga, part courtroom drama. David Dobkin’s first attempt at serious drama. The courtroom twists seemed contrived the last-minute romance all too convenient. Interesting but not fulfilling. #RobertDowneyJr #RobertDuvall #WarnerBros #VeraFarmiga #DavidDobkin #BillyBobThornton #LeightonMeester #JeremyStrong

English Film  Review

Johnson Thomas

Film: The Judge

Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Robert Duvall, Vera Farmiga, , Billy Bob Thornton, Leighton Meester, Jeremy Strong

Director: David Dobkin

Rating: *  *  * ½

Runtime:  141 min

Synopsis: Synopsis:Robert Downey Jr. plays a lawyer who heads home when his father, a judge, is implicated as a murder suspect in thiscomedy drama from Warner Bros. Vera Farmiga, Robert Duvall, Vincent D’Onofrio and Billy Bob Thornton head up the rest of the starring cast

Review

Director David Dobkin who gave us  the entertaining ‘Wedding Crashers’, dark and humorous ‘Clay pigeons’ and the dismal ‘Fred Claus’ and ‘The Change-up’ tries his hand at serious stuff and comes up with a fairly intense though slow-to-burn engagement.

 “The Judge,” is an unabashedly adult, old fashioned drama that has Robert Downey Jr. as a jaded big-city defense attorney Hank Palmer- a specialist in getting unsavory white-collar clients off the hook, taking up the legal cudgels for his estranged Dad, Joseph( Robert Duvall), an upstanding small-town magistrate who suddenly finds himself facing a possible murder rap and therefore has to relunctantly rely on his hotshot son to get him out of that soup.

Dobkin, whose father was a lawyer, is heard to have spent a number of years trying to get this script off the block but of course since his reputation was developed with comedies it proved doubly difficult.  

Dobkin’s persistence eventually paid off  and ‘The Judge’ has ample scope for directorial smarts as well as performance hefts.  Downey manages to ensnare you with his sad eyed glib verbosity while Duvall has the loftiness of idealism and old fashioned authoritativeness on his side and the role also incorporates his age related infirmities quite nicely. 

Dobkin stresses about too many details and in the process makes the narrative a little too dragged out and by the time it wakes up to it’s own power , the audience may have well gone to sleep. Respect for the two thespians that keeps you hoping for some fireworks and you are not disappointed. The climax is full of tense multi-pronged twists and spirals into a nail-bitingly intense closure. So patience does have it’s merits …

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