Review : The Judge

 THE  

JUDGE

Big city lawyer Hank Palmer returns to his childhood home where his father, the town's judge, is suspected of murder. Hank sets out to unravel the truth of events and, along the way, reconnect with his estranged family.

Hey Everyone, Today's review is about David Dobkin's 'The Judge'. Which stars Robert Downey Jr and Robert Duvall. The story goes that Hank Palmer (Robert Downey Jr) is a successful defense lawyer in Chicago, who is getting a divorce. When His brother calls with news that their mother has died, Hank returns to his childhood home to attend the funeral. Despite the brittle bond between Hank and his father (Robert Duvall) Hank finds himself having to be by his fathers side and defend him in court. It's Here, Hank must try in all his efforts to discover the true facts, behind the case in order to save his father from prison. By doing this, this binds together the dysfunctional family and reveals the struggles and secrecy that they have.

Now I have seen some bad films over the years, I think for me 'The Judge' is okay. It's nothing mind-blowly spectacualer or grippingly intense or anything. It's just okay. It has the raw ingredients of a good drama, strong concept, very well acted by the two main cast member, Duvall and Downey Jr. Yes, Just okay.

It got boring in places, the pacing of it isn't great. A little disjointed I would say, if anything it's done in such as way which sort of wants to destract the veiwer from the main concentration of what the films about with something else, in order to remind them moments later what they are watching. I'm not too sure what to think about that.

While I'm on the subject, it did take a while for the film to actually find it's feet and get going. It was very slow at the beginning, but picks up the pace rather smoothly and just has rough patches inbetween because as I said before, I gets boring in places.

However, the film is very uplifiting in it's approach of wanting to create a conection between a father and son relationship and developing that throughout the duration of the film, and then of course there is 'The Fourth Wall - The Audiences appeal as well' No good actor, acts out to an audience, whenever you watch live theatre, the actors would tend to act a performance as if there wasn't and audience there. That in tern complies that the place in which the audience would be is that 'Fourth Wall'. The film's very good at reaching out to people. I belived that the relation between 'Downey Jr' and 'Duvall' was sincear. I didn't feel that I was paying '£6.60' on a cinema ticket to go and be depressed.

You watch films like 'The Notebook' or 'My Sister's Keeper' and you do question weither or not if this is entertainment. The Judge isn't like that. It's about Hope and Trust in one another and communicates that through the drama and the belief in the actors to portray their characters well. Therefore I think 'Robert Duvall' was a very interesting choice of casting for the Father because Duvall is Duvall. He has his own style of acting take 'The Godfather' for instance. How much else can you do with a diverse style of acting such as Duvall's and bring it into a 2014 drama. It just proves that Duvall's still got it, he's a brilliant actor. And Robert Downey Jr is very good in the film as well.

I can't wait till this comes out on DVD. I would buy it, it's an interesting controversy to anything I've seen before and it's good in so many ways, you just have to find them. 8/10

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