An excellent parable about the importance of standing up for your views

Rating: 9/10 (27 November 2011)

First, the fact that the majority of this film is shot on one set where at various points, all four walls are visible is an impressive technical achievement. The camera work and set manipulation that this feat required must have been agonizing to plan and execute in a way that does not break the viewer's suspension of disbelief.
However, the film is noteworthy for more than singularly impressive camera work. It is a work of masterful acting in that the players disappear into their roles and all that the viewer sees is a man seeking to give a boy the benefit of the doubt when the rest of his life is at stake. The specifics may differ, but this is a sentiment that all people can agree upon, and this is why this is a great film: everyone has been in a position where they have had to convince a group of people that their position was the right one, partially through rational argument and partially through a sharing of gut feelings. But this shared experience is why this film is relate-able, why it is a movie that transcends cultural boundaries, and why in the year 2011, a inner city black male watching this film will be as moved by it as a suburban white girl who sees it in the year 1955.
This film really isn't about the boy, or the trial, or who killed the boy's father. It's about feeling passionately about something, and then going to whatever lengths to convince others of that, whether they have just as strong and rational an argument as you do but in opposition, whether they have an inner, purely emotional antagonism towards your point of view, or whether they simply don't care either way about the outcome. This film works on a different level than most movies do, and that is why the names of the jurors, the names of the boy, the arguments of the lawyers during the case, or who really killed the father, none of that is important. What is important is that one man decided to make a stand against eleven others because he felt that his position was right, and whether it was or not, his actions will resonate with every single viewer of this film who has ever took a stand on any issue and had someone tell him that the issue was "cut and dried."