The Judge: Film of the week

The Judge
Starring: Robert Downey Jr, Robert Duvall, Vera Farmiga, Vincent D'Onofrio
Rated: 7.5/10
This is the movie of the week — a gripping drama around the coming together of an estranged father and son — father, a respected, righteous judge in a small county and son, a cut-throat criminal attorney from the big bad urban world — both on two sides of the spectrum both professionally and personally.
You can accuse the film and its able director of playing to the gallery when it comes to the emotionality quotient, but really, is there any other way he could have dealt with the subject? Estranged father meets his long lost son on his mother’s funeral and sparks fly — sparks of hate, sparks of anger and sparks of what happened between the two all those long years ago.
Seasoned actors Robert Duvall and Robert Downey Jr in lead roles leave little scope for you to complain about drama being handled to perfection so The Judge despite being an overly slow film sits tight with its storyline.
Between Duvall and Downey you tend to forget the other characters in the film which, by the way, are no small flies and handle themselves pretty well as supporting cast.
The director does well to not get hyper about situations that he brings into the film wherein the son is trying his level best to extricate his jurist father from a murder charge and fails to do so because the father will not allow it and as defendant testifies against himself!
In between, the family thing walks in and all the angst and anger in this very special relationship is brought to the core with finesse. Some scenes shock you with their simple intensity, like the one in which the father tries to ward off his son from the bathroom where he has collapsed.
Both pride and prejudice get to play equal partners and that’s where the uniqueness of this emotional film soars. Not to be missed.

Source: Sunday Pioneer, 19 October, 2014

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