The rest of the movie is as pretentious as this picture, so you know.
Why I Saw It: I showed up to the movie theater and it was the next movie showing.
Cast: This is clearly a vehicle meant for Robert Downey Jr. to shine and to a lesser extent for Robert Duvall. Beyond the fact that he is a producer, I have no idea what Downey is doing here. He's way too good for this yet he chose to do it. He's playing a cocky high-powered lawyer who realizes that he has a heart of gold. Duvall is Downey's dad: a judge on trial for murder. D'Onofrio is the older brother who was cut short of his potential due to an accident. Jeremy Strong goes "full retard" as the younger brother. Vera Farmiga is the conveniently single old flame who still lives in town. Dax Shepard is fun as Duvall's first lawyer, who is completely in over his head. Don't worry, none of them do anything you wouldn't expect.
Plot: Downey's mother dies. He comes back to the small Indiana town* that he grew up in for the funeral. We quickly and repeatedly learn that Downey doesn't get along with his father due to something he did when he was younger. Duvall gets arrested for a murder that he probably committed. Downey takes his defense, and I don't want to bore you with the rest. If you've ever seen a courtroom drama or a movie about a big city guy coming back to the small town he grew up in then you know exactly what happens.
*I understand that you film where the tax breaks are but the town in that movie couldn't be more New England is if they tried. Why do we have to call this Indiana?
Elephant in the Room: At least the direction is good though, right? Look, for all the movies I see, I still have a pretty limited film vocabulary and eye for things. Even still, this direction was ridiculous and obvious. The week before filming began, I can only assume the director read a book called How to Make Every Shot Look Cool. I'm not supposed to notice how hard the director is trying. Everything was either shot from the other side of a window, or titled , or changes the focus from something close to something far away, or some other trick. Too much.
To Sum Things Up:
I can only imagine that Robert Downey Jr. assumed this would get him an Oscar. That's not happening, by the way. This as Oscar bait-y as it gets, but there's nothing special about it to make it anything other than a checklist of everything someone thinks a good movie needs. Like, literally, I don't know how Downey does this movie after playing that character in Tropic Thunder. I really disliked this movie. It rubbed me wrong in every imaginable way.
Verdict (?): Strongly Don't Recommend
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