"This isn't a game!"

Rating: Null/10 (23 April 2004)

Excellent if dated examination of personal prejudices, selfishness, hesitance, past mistakes, and responsibility when lone juror Henry Fonda tries to get his fellow jurors to take the time to talk about the trial a little more before condemning a boy accused of murdering his father to death by vote of "guilty".
Remade as a TV movie starring the late Jack Lemmon (in the Fonda role), the late George C. Scott (in the Lee J. Cobb role) and Tony Danza as the guy who just wants to go to the ball game. The TV movie had a few modern updates such as making the jury more ethnically balanced, a Hispanic guy on trial and a lady judge (Mary McDonnell of "Dances With Wolves"). The prejudice examined in the remake was more racial, where as the prejudice of the original film had more to do with where a kid was raised and how the young and the old differ.
Both are great, however, with a hot, stuffy atmosphere that'll make you sweat even in the middle of winter. Fonda delivers one of his best performances as the one juror who's taken into consideration the fact that they have another human being's life in their hands and is unhappy with how the trial was handled. The other angry men are good as well, but Lee J. Cobb stands out in particular as the stubborn one who condemns the suspect not so much because he thinks he's guilty but more from his own failed attempt to raise his own son.