"Wherever you run into it, prejudice always obscures the truth."

Rating: 10/10 (1 January 2008)

Take a classic film and strip it down to its bare necessities. Gone are the extravagant sets and sweeping camera-work; removed are the lavish visual effects and epic story lines. What we are left with is cinema in its purest form, where acting is the sole driving-force of the narrative, and our attention is retained through the director's thorough exploitation of a bare-bones scenario. Sidney Lumet's debut feature-length film, '12 Angry Men (1957),' is quite simply one of the most arresting motion pictures I have ever seen, a veritable melting pot of gripping performances and impassioned monologues. With the exception of its bookends, and a brief scene in an adjacent washroom, the entire film unfolds exclusively within the one stifling, increasingly-claustrophobic jury room, as a group of twelve jurors {all male, mostly middle-aged and middle-class}, with vastly differing attitudes and prejudices, debate the innocence or guilt of a young Hispanic man charged with the premeditated stabbing murder of his father.
Prior to 1957, director Sidney Lumet had already acquired some experience in television, though it wasn't until he released his first feature film, a low-budget offering shot in only 17 days, that he began to attract the attention of critics. Though '12 Angry Men' was commercially unsuccessful {in an age of lavish, technicolour adventures, David Lean's magnificent 'The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)' was more to the taste of audiences of the day}, the film received three Oscar nominations, for Best Writing, Best Director and Best Picture. Of course, it was Lean's epic that won each of these categories, among numerous others. Lumet's film, adapted by Reginald Rose from his own 1954 Studio One teleplay, explores the fairness and infallibility of the American judicial system, and the ways by which personal prejudice may affect the outcome of a criminal case. Though the film opens at the conclusion of the hearing, as the apparently-bored judge (Rudy Bond) offers his final instructions to the jury members, the events of the trial are later recreated through dialogue, without ever resorting to cumbersome flashbacks or heavy-handed narration.
What ultimately makes '12 Angry Men' such an electrifying viewing experience are the incredible performances of the twelve main actors, each player delivering a distinct, perfectly-pitched characterisation that contributes richly towards their jury's deliberations on the court-case. Central to the story, of course, is Juror #8 (Henry Fonda), the lone dissenting member, whose unwillingness to send a conceivably-innocent man to the electric chair forces the other jurors to reconsider their stance on what had initially seemed an "open-and-shut case." Fonda, who also co-produced the film, gives a sincere and righteous performance, his actions assuredly heroic, despite the very real possibility that he has helped a guilty criminal escape from justice. The remaining players (in clock-wise order around the juror's table: Martin Balsam, John Fiedler, Lee J. Cobb, E.G. Marshall, Jack Klugman, Ed Binns, Jack Warden, Joseph Sweeney, Ed Begley, George Voskovec and Robert Webber) each contribute with faultless performances, though some play a more significant role in the proceedings than do others.
It would be plain naïve to label any one of the twelve jurors a "villain," but the man who clashes most frequently with the Fonda's well-meaning dissenter is Juror #3 (Lee J. Cobb), a loud-mouthed and temperamental bully, whose failed relationship with his own adult son has given him an overwhelming prejudice towards young people. Rather than deciding the murder trial based on the evidence, Juror #3 subconsciously relies on his own tremendous bias to settle the eventual fate of the accused man. Equally bigoted is Juror #10 (Ed Begley), whose astonishing partiality is fully revealed in his final manic tirade against lower-class citizens. In one of the film's most brutally powerful sequences, the remaining jurors callously rise from their tables in response to Juror #10's deplorable outburst, his confidence shattering as he realises that he is alone in his narrow-minded views. Also interesting is Jack Warden's Juror #7, an impatient salesman, whose complete indifference to the fate of the Accused prompts him to alter his vote in favour of the majority.
Despite working in an extremely confined space, Lumet certainly makes the most of his minimalist setting, and cinematographer Boris Kaufman {who also worked on 'On the Waterfront (1954)'} employed lenses with gradually-increasing focal lengths to make it seem as though the walls were closing in on the characters, heightening the ever-present sense of claustrophobia. Lumet is a master of creating mood, as he also demonstrated in his finest film, 'Fail-Safe (1964),' and there's a certain, illogical urgency in the jurors' proceedings, as though Fonda's character is continually fighting a losing battle. Though some of events of the jury room would technically not be allowed {Juror #8's extra investigations  purchasing the knife, pacing the old witness' journey to the door  would undoubtedly have resulted in a mistrial}, the discussions in the film work merely to prove a single, all-too-significant moral: according to the Constitution, the Accused can only be convicted if there exists no reasonable doubt of his guilt. Ultimately, whether he actually committed the murder or not is almost beside the point, particularly when the life of a potentially-innocent man is hanging in the balance.