There may be no greater commentary on the sad state of the modern film industry than the fact that a new movie by Clint Eastwood, a staple of the big screen for seven decades, was largely deprived of the chance to play in that format because it wasn’t considered worthy of a wide or even limited theatrical release in North America beyond a handful of screens in a couple cities by its distributor Warner Bros. Despite the fact of Eastwood’s name recognition and proven profitability (not to mention the under-served boomer audience demographic), Juror #2 is the first of his forty-one movies as director not to be given even the opportunity to hit. What makes it sadder is it may very well be the ninety-four year-old film legend’s final movie. And to add insult, it is his best movie in years.
By that I should qualify it is a fairly good movie; nothing dramatically excellent, but something of a decent throwback legal thriller -a genre that has all but disappeared in the 2020s. And that does count for a good degree of its charm, that it operates with a kind of old-school attentiveness to its drama that would put it on par with movies like Primal Fear or Apt Pupil, or Eastwood’s own True Crime, with which Juror #2 shares some particular themes.
Its premise is a simple though compelling one, concerning a murder case where we know the defendant to be innocent -at least of this particular crime; because on the first day of the trial Juror #2, Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult), realizes he is in fact probably the guilty party, having hit something with his car the night of the crime very near to the scene of the crime in an intoxicated state. And so the jury deliberations play out a 12 Angry Men scenario, where in ease of his guilt, Justin gradually persuades his fellow jurors against convicting while trying to conceal his own culpability.
As the issue appears to most parties to be an open and shut case, the tension through much of the movie is centred thoroughly in Justin's own head. It would be easy for him to move on, let go, and let someone else take the fall -that someone being James Sythe (Gabriel Basso), the abusive boyfriend of the deceased. But he has a conscience, yet not so much of one that he would turn himself in at the cost of his life and family commitments. It is a very good, measured performance by Hoult, who plays that desperation to relieve himself of both burdens very relatably. He is not cast as the bad guy getting away with it, which is crucial; and carries the tension well -it is one of his better showcases.
Though certainly the characters around him are less compelling, many of whom are one-dimensional or even straw men for the sake of conflict. A few of the jurors definitely come off as counterparts to figures from 12 Angry Men, especially one particular stubborn man, played by Cedric Yarbrough, who echoes Lee J. Cobb in his steadfast belief Sythe did it. Toni Collette spends much of her early screen-time as the prosecutor as little more than a conservative caricature of a fierce feminist lawyer -seen to be an opportunist hoping to leverage a conviction for her ambition to be district attorney, in one of the more pronounced aspects of Eastwood’s political views informing the movie (which also opines the innocence of gruff, volatile men charged with domestic abuse). Her surety becomes less fixed as the movie goes along, particularly following an investigation by J.K. Simmons’s retired cop juror, who violates jury rules by investigating details of the case himself. Zoey Deutch is Justin’s pregnant wife who gradually forms suspicions of her own, and Kiefer Sutherland has a small role as an AA instructor and lawyer who is Justin’s only confidante.
Eastwood’s direction is very stable and sure as he keeps the scope limited and in its way grounded. His famous one-take shooting style, though a bane for some of his more recent movies in which he himself appeared, seems to have largely worked on this movie, with no scenes feeling particularly awkward or off -a credit to his collaborators certainly and their discipline, especially the oft in-focus Hoult. Though nothing about the movie is stylized, it feels different from its contemporaries beyond just the genre and subject; its subtle though decisive choices in the compositions and editing -the rhythm of a pan-in for example or the occasional claustrophobia of a conversation scene are reminiscent of methods in classic conspiracy movies like The Conversation or JFK. Eastwood isn’t close to that ballpark to be sure, but operating by his own rules, what would not have been very distinguishing thirty years ago (a time when this movie would have been a modest hit), is quietly interesting and remarkable again.
It’s not so remarkable though, as curious as the story and Hoult’s performance through it are. The script is quite dry in a lot of places -and again several of its characters mere drones, aspects of the conflict the court case is about are underdeveloped -the film doesn’t do much to make you care about Sythe potentially going to prison on a false charge beyond the effect it has on Justin’s conscience. And it’s not a very dynamically textured movie, Justin’s house about as dull and flat to look at as the jury room. It is a stripped down movie from the man who just a decade ago made American Sniper, its locales are dim and without much personality that the film’s tension can only partly make up for.
Yet though parts of its presentation may be stale, the modest reflective tone of Juror #2 is anything but. In addition to its other traditional qualities, the movie has sharp convictions on justice, which may be quaint in our current reality, but clearly it’s something, Eastwood -most famous cinematically as a dispatcher of justice, or at least his own view of it- cares about quite a lot. And that cynicism with which he portrays the court institution, particularly Collette’s Killebrew and the judge played by Amy Aquino -and even to some extent his own and the audience’s sympathy towards Justin- makes for an interesting closing statement from the man, who peppers this critique with some optimism in the end.
Clint Eastwood’s movies come with a vast array of commentaries that have not always complimented his particular political stripe, but the theme of several of them -whether he has been director or star- has been a commitment to justice, in ideal if not in practice. Juror #2 feels like a good send-off in that regard. As an engaging thriller and low-key interesting character drama, it is a better one.
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