The Judge

The Judge is currently streaming in Australia on Amazon Prime Video, and it rewards the patience it asks of you. The length is exactly right for the story it is telling — nothing rushed, nothing dragged out. A 7/10 rating says what the writing already makes obvious: this one works. Watch it for Robert Downey Jr. — one of the stronger performances out there right now. There is no real reason to keep putting it off — it is right there on Amazon Prime Video.

There is a reason The Judge keeps coming up in conversation. The Judge trusts its audience to sit with discomfort instead of resolving it too quickly. A successful lawyer returns to his hometown for his mother's funeral only to discover that his estranged father, the town's judge, is suspected of murder. The performances from Robert Downey Jr. And Robert Duvall give it more weight than the premise alone would suggest. It was released in 2014. The performances in The Judge do a lot of work in the silences between the dialogue. It knows exactly what it is, and does not try to be anything else.

For anyone looking for storytelling that takes its characters seriously, The Judge delivers. It does not lean on comparisons to make its case. A contained runtime means every scene is doing real work. Robert Downey Jr. Carries the material with a performance that rewards close attention. Worth starting sooner rather than later.