A well-made, timeless, and thought-provoking film.

Rating: 8/10 (9 May 2018)

After watching this three times for a class, I have some mixed feelings on this movie. I would like to see a version where the scenario was reversed and eleven jurors thought the defendant was clearly innocent and one thought he was guilty. It would be a much more morose debate with an even darker ending, but I would still like to see it. As I was watching it, I felt pretty confident that the kid would get out of his death sentence, but it was still interesting to watch and see how all of the jurors were convinced.
The characters are all written pretty well, with even the minor ones having a lot of personality. I think I got a couple of them confused on my first viewing but for the most part they were easy to keep track of. The ones I found most interesting were numbers 4, 5, and 6, being the stockbroker, the guy from the Baltimore slum, and the painter. Juror number 8, the hero, I found to be rather hypocritical as I went back and watched it a second and third time. He says that he just wants to debate and think on the matter more, but really, I don't think he does. Any time he speaks, he's trying to bring the jury toward a verdict of "not guilty", he has prepared evidence for why the kid isn't guilty, and he piggy-backs off of any comment from anyone else that pushes the jury toward a not-guilty verdict. This hardly seems like an unbiased form of deliberation, and to be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if he were a lot different in the rest of his life than he is in deliberating.
As a viewer, it's also very engaging to think of yourself as a juror and decide whether and when you are convinced by the evidence. Even if you can assume that the kid isn't guilty, it is still possible to think about the evidence objectively and decide when you are convinced.
Most of the dialogue is very well-structured and concise in the debates, though the characters do rehash some points of the case for the audience's sake. Some of it feels forced, but it is necessary for the audience to be on the same page as the jurors so any dialogue that isn't "fly on the wall" is pretty excusable. But it rarely drags and keeps you interested. The characters are also diverse enough in personality (despite lacking any diversity in race or gender) to make it so that you will have a couple that you like and a couple that you don't like. Sidney Lumet definitely has a few that he wants you to root for and a couple he wants you to hate.
Even though the filmmaking style and a few dialogue colloquialisms feel a bit outdated, the movie has stood the test of time. Is it the fifth best movie of all time? I would say that's going a bit far, but it is a very well-made yet simple movie. It proves that all you really need to make a classic is some good content and solid performances and little else. Those aren't always the easiest things to come by, but in a world where movies are constantly exceeding $100 million budgets, it's something we would do well to remember. Overall Rating 8/10