Powerful Simplicity

Rating: 9/10 (16 July 2016)

This movie is great. It displays the prejudice, conceit, narrow-mindedness, arrogance, impatience and vicious stubbornness of human modern condition, even in this so-called enlightened country.
While Henry Fonda's character might give us hope for rationality and cool- headed deliberation in times of stress and in the interest of justice, that his is an overwhelmingly lone voice in a crowded room, is truly disturbing.
Sometimes it feels as if the movie is shot in real time. the jurors are all defined in terms of their personalities, backgrounds, occupations, prejudices and emotional tilts.
This is a film where tension comes from personality conflict, dialogue and body language, not action; where the defendant has been glimpsed only in a single brief shot; where logic, emotion and prejudice struggle to control the field. It is a masterpiece of stylized realism--the style coming in the way the photography and editing comment on the bare bones of the content.