The Judge suffers from too much melodramatic schmaltz to earn our respect or trust. Among the questions raised during our October movie preview , one included the ensemble court drama The Judge : could Actor Robert Downey Jr. rise above his Iron Man persona and deliver a great dramatic performance, while giving its deep cast their individual moments in the sun? The answer is not the strong yes we would have hoped, with the unnecessarily long film barely having enough to keep our attention. Hothead defense attorney Hank Palmer (Downey) lives the fast life, routinely getting the charges against his high-priced clients removed. It's not until the sudden death of his mother that Hank must return to his hometown to bury her and deal with the demons from his past. There's his brother Glen (Vincent D'Onofrio) whose high profile accident in their youth ruined his baseball career, and the girl Hank left behind (Vera Farminga), who now has a daughter. But it's the