Juror #2
Clint Eastwood’s fortieth film as director is a nuanced and intelligent courtroom drama that challenges the values of the US justice system.
About a man: Toni Collette and Nicholas Hoult
Image courtesy of Warner Bros.
The truth has many faces. And nobody knows that more than a lawyer, regardless of which side of the defendant they are standing. A man is accused of killing his girlfriend and the testament of witnesses, his past history and video footage of the couple together before the girl’s death point to an open-and-shut case. Every detail of the fracas that preceded the fateful event amounts to a guilty verdict, from the tattoo on the man’s neck to the bottle of beer he smashed as they argued in a crowded bar. And yet…
There is a thin line between what is justice and what is right and Jonathan Abrams’ consummate script provides plenty of food for thought. All that the director-producer Clint Eastwood had to do was to honour that screenplay with the respect it deserved. For one of the most visible figures in the entertainment industry since the 1950s, Eastwood has arrived at a place, a maturity, to know that the best storyteller must remain invisible. His knack is for allowing his actors to give the best that they can and for placing the camera exactly where it needs to be – to dupe the audience into believing that there isn’t even a director in the room. It takes decades of experience to learn that the best drama is served with a light touch.
Set in the upstanding city of Savannah (where Clint previously filmed the courtroom drama Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil), a jury is selected to witness the case of one James Michael Sythe (Gabriel Basso), accused of bludgeoning his girlfriend to death. Unfolded with forensic attention to detail, the opening scenes are fascinating in their own right in that the simple process of jury selection is something we are seldom privy to in courtroom dramas. Juror #2 is Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult), whose wife is in the third trimester of a high-risk pregnancy and, like his eleven colleagues, he would rather be anywhere than in that courtroom. Every juror has his or her reason for the case to be over as soon as possible, but when Justin is exposed to the details of the alleged murder he finds himself in a moral dilemma where he must juggle the demands of his wife’s needs, his own future and his integrity as an American citizen…
As the case proceeds, each member of the jury is brought into relief as his or her own lives and prejudices are brought into play. Each has their own story, and as Justin Kemp’s doubts cloud the other jurors’ certainty, they divulge more layers to the apparent stereotypes we initially perceived them to be. There are great performances here, too, from J.K. Simmons’ world-weary florist, to Amy Aquino as the presiding judge and Zoey Deutch as Justin’s exasperated wife who begins to smell a rat. For viewers with a longer memory, it is almost surreal to see Toni Colette as the confident, ballsy prosecutor with political ambitions and Hoult as the tortured juror in her gaze as, in a different lifetime, she once played his mother in the 2002 English comedy-drama About a Boy. Clint Eastwood is now 94 and should this be his final film, as mooted, it is more than a creditable swansong, standing alongside the great courtroom dramas, from 12 Angry Men (1957) to Anatomy of a Fall (2023).
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette, J.K. Simmons, Chris Messina, Gabriel Basso, Zoey Deutch, Cedric Yarbrough, Leslie Bibb, Kiefer Sutherland, Amy Aquino, Adrienne C. Moore, Francesca Eastwood, Bria Brimmer, Phil Biedron, Chikako Fukuyama, Jason Coviello, Zele Avradopoulos, KateLynn E. Newberry, Tom Thon, Drew Scheid.
Dir Clint Eastwood, Pro David M. Bernstein, Ellen Goldsmith-Vein and Jeremy Bell, Screenplay Jonathan Abrams, Ph Yves Bélanger, Pro Des Ronald R. Reiss, Ed Joel Cox and David Cox, Music Mark Mancina, Costumes Deborah Hopper, Sound Richard King.
Dichotomy Films/Gotham Group/Malpaso Productions-Warner Bros.
113 mins. USA. 2024. UK and US Rel: 1 November 2024. Cert. 12A .
