Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Robert Duvall, Billy Bob Thornton, and Vera Farmiga
Distributor: Roadshow Films
Runtime: 142 mins. Reviewed in Oct 2014
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This an American drama about a city lawyer who learns that his mother as died, and returns home to Carlonville, Indiana, to grieve her passing.
Hank Palmer (Robert Downey Jr.) is a Chicago defense attorney, who is especially skilled at stopping privileged people, most of them guilty as charged, going to jail. “Innocent people can’t afford me”, he says cynically. Hank has long been estranged from his ageing father, Joe (Robert Duvall), who practices in his home town as a respected judge.
Shortly after he arrives home for his mother’s funeral, Joe is charged with murder after a hit-run accident. In trying to discover the truth about his father, Hank learns things about his family that he didn’t know.
This is less a movie that unravels the facts behind a father’s alleged crime, than a film which focuses sharply on the relationship between father and son. Joe disapproves massively of his son’s slick behaviour, and Hank resents his rejection. The film is essentially a family drama about the contradictions in life that mire the formation of loving relationships, or at least interfere with them being formed. Joe doesn’t pass any opportunity to remind his son about how much he has always been a disappointment to him, and Hank sees his father “as not capable of over-riding a life of ethical superiority”.
Duvall is a father who is brash, high-minded, stern and unforgiving. Downey is a son with a showy demeanour but razor-sharp mind, who doesn’t care a lot about people, and who decides against his better judgement to defend his father in court. Father and son have a very tense relationship with each other, and their relationship is further complicated by the fact that Hank learns that his father is suffering from cancer, and might only have months to live.
This is a movie that explores family dynamics in an emotional compelling way. The performances of father and son are outstanding, and Robert Downey Jr. must loom as an Academy Award contender for 2015 for his role as Hank. He plays Hank with brilliant emotional subtlety. The film is an absorbing, well directed drama about a dysfunctional family mending their relationships and trying to become more understanding of each other.
There are elements of “August: Osage County” (2013) about the film. Instead of an autocratic mother (played by Meryl Streep in “Osage”) who had a conflicted relationship with an alienated daughter, this film is about an overbearing father having to relate to a disaffected son. Like “Osage”, family tensions escalate dramatically and erupt before they improve, and like “Osage”, characters in this film reveal secrets to each other and learn to live together painfully.
The film is a long one that is heavy on subplots, including one focused on Hank’s high school sweetheart (Vera Farmiga). As a side-concern, it deals also with the moral-legal implications of the death of Joe’s alleged victim. Joe is a recovered alcoholic, who has no memory of the night in question, and he faces a tough prosecutor (Billy Bob Thornton) in the case against him. For Joe’s sake, father and son need an emotionally honest relationship with each other, and the director of the movie (David Dobkin) constantly stresses its relevance in the way that he develops his two main characters.
The real strength of this movie lies in the chemistry between its chief players. Downey and Duvall work wonderfully well together. In an extraordinary bathroom scene, a cancer-stricken father accepts help from a giving son. The scene shows male acting at its intimate best.
As the movie moves to a sentimental, but moving, conclusion, the friction between father and son along the way becomes fascinating to watch. In this film, two master-actors capture the tortured character of genuine love between father and son.
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