Home video review: 'The Judge'

"The Judge" (R, Warner), a courtroom procedural tucked into the folds of a family melodrama, feels like one of its own characters, a onetime champ who could have made it to the big leagues, had his potential not been squandered by someone else's poor choices. The movie has casting on its side, as heavyweights Robert Downey Jr. (playing a predatory Chicago defense attorney) and Robert Duvall (his estranged father) trade punches in a game of rope-a-dope that approaches heights of poetry. "The Judge" also possesses its share of astringent humor, some courtesy of Vera Farmiga, who plays Downey's bleach-blonde high school girlfriend with tartly funny throwaway lines.