The Best Courtroom-Drama Ever Made!

Rating: 10/10 (22 November 2014)

To Kill a Mockingbird garner the reputation as the best courtroom drama as it ranks the highest on most lists. It is a great film, I'll admit, but 12 Angry Men blows it out of the water. Funny thing is, this takes place in one room for 98% of the whole movie. There's about one minute in the actual courtroom in the beginning and one minute outside the building at the end. The rest is in the room where the jurors decide whether or not the defendant is guilty. When a movie takes place inside one room throughout the whole movie, the script has to be extremely strong and exciting. 12 Angry Men's script is those. It follows 12 very distinctive jurors who know that a Spanish-American youth murdered his father. All evidence gathered points to him, so all think that they can reach a guilty verdict right away. But Juror #8 (Fonda) is the only one that thinks the kid is innocent. One by one, Juror #8 convinces the eleven others that the young man is not guilty as they carefully analyze the evidence they were given. Each piece of evidence that is turned around is sheer genius and very thrilling. I actually consider this to be a courtroom- thriller because of how exciting it is. I found my heart rate rising at the site of each piece f the puzzle being put together. I could only imagine how this movie would have turned out if Alfred Hitchcock directed it. Fun fact: only two jurors' names are revealed at the very end, with the audience forgetting they do not know anybody else's names. Aside from this being very thrilling and educational, and having a great script and characters, it deals with themes of racism and family, as both play important roles on why the Jurors vote "guilty" in the first place.
Scale of 1-10: 11/10!