A hot shot city lawyer defends his estranged
father, a small town judge, in a murder trial.
The film opens with one of the
classic cliches of the courtroom
thriller, as Downey Jr.’s hotshot
big city lawyer, Hank Palmer, is
confronted by a disgruntled prosecutor in the men’s room during
a case recess. “This is a terrible
cliche,” Tony Stark, er, sorry, Hank
remarks. “Indeed it is,” we answer,
presuming the movie has some
new tricks up its sleeve if it’s willing to readily acknowledge such
an offense. But then we immediately get another cliche, that of
New Jersey Stage
the embittered city man forced to
return to the small town he severed ties with and vowed never to
return to, when Hank heads to rural Indiana to attend his mother’s
funeral. The reason Hank holds
such loathing for his hometown
is his estranged relationship
with his father, Joe (Duvall), the
town’s judge. (Would a one horse
town like this have its own courthouse?) Hank and Joe rekindle
their mutual hatred, and Hank is
about to board a plane back to
October 2014
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