Chris Nashawaty: The Judge: Review. Entertainment Weekly, 17. Oktober 2014, abgerufen am 4. November 2014 (englisch): „The film is a throwback to the rousing, middle-of-the-road courtroom dramas that flourished during the Grisham box office gold rush of the mid-'90s. … What makes the film more than just a dusty Grisham retread is that the case (as compelling as it is) is merely the backdrop for a more emotionally engaging story about fathers and sons played, like a duet, by two virtuoso actors who give the film not only all they have but probably more than it requires.“
A. O. Scott: Back Home Again, and Little Has Changed. In: The New York Times. 10. Oktober 2014, S. C13, abgerufen am 4. November 2014: „Presumably to save time – something this long, baggy, meandering film, directed by David Dobkin from a screenplay by Nick Schenk and Bill Dubuque, otherwise has very little interest in doing. … played by fine actors encouraged to graze in a meadow overgrown with thickets of plot and clumps of easy sentimentality. … The patriarch of the Palmer brood is the title character and the only reason to take an interest in this movie, since he is played by Robert Duvall. … He is, more precisely, a collection of personality traits in search of a coherent character, which Mr. Duvall, by dint of sheer professionalism, comes very close to supplying. … The road to that touching, foreordained moment passes through enough dramatic incident for three movies, none of them terribly original. … And then “The Judge” turns into a crime story, and a supershouty, macho-weepy, buried-family-secrets melodrama. … They add up to a sprawl of narrative that is as unconvincing as the suspiciously sprawl-free, nostalgia-tinged town where it all takes place.“
