Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man, Sherlock Holmes) stars in the new melodrama The Judge with legendary Oscar-winning actor Robert Duvall (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, True Grit, To Kill A Mockingbird). Downey plays a hotshot defense attorney in Chicago who returns to his Indiana hometown for his mother’s funeral. There he’s reunited with his estranged father (Duvall), the town judge, who is suspected of murder. “These movies don’t really get made any more,” said director David Dobkin whose experience is in buddy comedy (Wedding Crashers, The Change-Up, Fred Claus).
The Judge is being shown this week at the Toronto Film Festival. Critic Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter isn’t overly impressed with the film but did mention: “there are several father-son scenes of considerable intensity that ask both Downey and Duvall to go places they have seldom gone onscreen, physically and emotionally.” If The Judge captures Duvall going somewhere he hasn’t in The Apostle or Apocalypse Now or perhaps the greatest father role/performance of all time, The Great Santini, then The Judge should be the must-see film of the year.
