Between Sherlock Holmes and Tony Stark, we’ve become accustomed to seeing Robert Downey Jr mixing sardonic and smarts. No bad thing, only we all know the actor is capable of emotionally-engaging, powerhouse performances.
Something we could well see the actor return to with The Judge, in which he plays a high-flying douchebag lawyer (OK, not much of a jump, but bear with us), who gets more than he bargained for when he travels home for his mother’s funeral.
There, he learns that his estranged Alzheimer’s-suffering father (Robert Duvall), the town's Judge, has been charged with murder, leaving him with no option but to take his old man on as a client and slug it out in the courtroom with Billy Bob Thornton.
The film is packed with an A-list roster - Melissa Leo, Vera Farmiga – yet it’s the father/son scenes between Downey Jr and Duvall, no doubt forcing a change of conscious for the hotshot lawyer at some point, which look as if they’ll be tugging on heartstrings to the point of cardiac arrest.
Either way, it’ll do before Iron Man 4.
The Judge will be in UK cinemas from 24 October
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