Great Movie!!!

Rating: 10/10 (19 April 2004)

12 Angry Men is a good example of "Less being better". "SPOILERS AHEAD! I have seen this movie a million times and every time I see it I notice something that I never noticed before. I just saw it again on SHO direct and for the first time I noticed a woman on the screen. She is walking very slowly in front of the court house in the last shot. Even though the movie was essentially shot in one room, I wasn't wanting for other scenery. Something that happens to me while I look at one room movies. The movie is about 12 jurors who decide the fate of a 18 year old kid who is accused of knifing his father to death. Listening to the jurors you get the idea that this kid has had a lot of problems in his life and he is either a Puerto Rican or some other type of latino and poor. I say PR because this is NYC in the 50's. And some jurors refer to him as "those people". We get to see people who seem like normal folks coming out about their hatred about poor ethnic people. We have a man who for some reason is using the defendant for his own agenda. We find out later it has something to do with his son. We have a juror who is so worried about a baseball game he is willing to go along with other jurors so he can go to the game. There is a ad exec who is a idiot and a stockbroker that is uptight. I think this really is accurate about what type of people get on a jury. What I also thought was interesting is how the witnesses stories was refuted. I don't think the witness's meant any malice but they wanted attention or to be important and they taylored their story for that affect. It also touched upon how bad a poor persons lawyer could be. If it was not for Henry Fonda and the John Sweeney character that kid would of been toast. The jurors also wanted to throw in the towel very quickly. The scary part is this. I have heard that many times there is a lone juror who wants to talk it out but because this person is alone they get intimidated by the other jurors and they back down. In this movie these jurors even accuse the Jack Klugman character of changing his vote because he is said to be like "those people". This happens in real life especially if the defendant is a minority and there is only one of that minority on the jury. If a Asian is a defendant and there is one Asian on the jury they are made to feel they better go with the other jurors even though they might feel the other way. Mr Lumet was not just making this stuff up. The remake was OK but why did they have to remake it? In the remake they changed the racial makeup but there were no women on the jury!! HUH! This is one of my favorite movies of all time.