Totally worth watching

This was way better than the critics would have you believe, absolutely worth checking out and an important film in RDJ’s career. He totally carries this punchy family drama and his lawyering is electric.

He’s a real team player too, working well alongside Duvall, who’s in heavyweight mode as the dad, and Vin D’of who turns in a really subtle, lived-in performance as the older bro.

Check out the Rotten Tomatoes score - audiences really respond to this film, but woke critics hate it. Why? Because it’s pro-family, pro-small town, and is sympathetic to its male-heavy cast of characters. Metropolitan wokists hate anything that might be genuinely nourishing to men.

Sadly, just when I was thinking ‘I guess once in a blue moon Hollywood can still turn out a solid, non-woke film after all’ I checked to see when it was made and this movie is already 7 years old - no way would contemporary Hollywood allow something of this quality and wholesomeness to be made now. Even more reason to check it out.

That said, it’s not a perfect film. The family drama detracts from the court case and the epic showdown between RDJ and Billy Bob Thornton’s prosecution lawyer never materialises, instead we get a scene with Duvall on the stand having an unusually intimate exchange with his lawyer/son - it felt like more family drama in the wrong place and I wasn’t convinced a judge would allow such talk, nor that Duvall (a judge himself) would say these things, and can you really be legally represented by your own son? Maybe, but this oddball arrangement wasn’t addressed by the jury, who we never got to meet.

Also, some of the family drama was kinda convoluted and vague. So RDJ probably crashes a car DUI which permanently damaged his brother’s hand which prevented him from becoming a baseball legend, and his dad hates his guts for it? Most high-school jocks don’t make the big-league and end up living normal lives…. move on. Plus it was clearly an accident.

Also, RDJ gets hate for supposedly being a reckless rebel, but then he also gets hate for ‘leaving’ (adults can’t leave home?) and becoming a hotshot lawyer in the city. Surely the fact that he became a roaring success deserves some credit and his adolescent waywardness can be forgiven? Who isn’t a bit of a prick when they’re 14?

It all wraps up in a mostly satisfying way but you do get the feeling that some parts were overcooked, others undercooked and some rewrites could have made this a more focused and powerful classic, but the reason to see this film is to watch these great actors having a magnificent brawl, and stirring some deep thoughts about family and fate.