The Greatest-ever Legal Drama and One of the Greatest Films of All Time

Rating: 10/10 (12 April 2006)

This is a courtroom drama with a difference; we see nothing of the actual trial except the end of the judge's summing up. We only get a brief glimpse of the defendant, a young man accused of stabbing to death his abusive father. We do not see the lawyers or any of the witnesses. The action is confined to the jury room after the trial has finished. At first, eleven jurors believe that the defendant is guilty but one, played by Henry Fonda, has doubts, and tries to convince his colleagues that the case has not been proved beyond reasonable doubt.
The remarkable thing about this film is that each of the twelve jurymen (all are male) emerges as an individual in his own right. Thanks are due to Vukodlak whose helpful review accurately summarises their characters. The jurors are referred to by their jury numbers, not their names, although we discover the surnames of Henry Fonda's character Number 8 (Davis) and of his colleague Number 9 (McCardle) right at the end. Number 8 is the key character. At first he is somewhat hesitant in his views. He is not convinced of the boy's innocence, and perhaps, at first, not even of the reasonable doubt about his guilt that would justify bringing in a "not guilty" verdict. He is, however, unwilling to condemn a young man to the electric chair without close consideration of all the issues, and suggests that the jury should take its time to talk the matter over. As they do, each piece of evidence is subjected to close scrutiny, the reliability of witnesses is cast into doubt, and holes start to emerge in what had previously seemed a watertight prosecution case. One by one the more conscientious members of the jury, with one exception, start to come over to Number 8's point of view.
Four other jurors play particularly important parts in the drama. Number 7, played by Jack Warden, is the least conscientious of all. He is not worried in the least about the defendant's guilt or innocence. He has tickets for a baseball game that evening and wants to reach a verdict as quickly as possible so that he does not miss the match. At first he votes to find the defendant guilty, but when he sees how things are going he abruptly changes his vote to not guilty in order to get home more quickly. (He is deservedly rebuked by Number 11, a painstaking, foreign-born watchmaker).
Number 4, played by E. G. Marshall, is the exception mentioned above, the one juror who approaches his duties conscientiously but who nevertheless holds out for a guilty verdict almost to the very end. He is a stockbroker by profession, clearly something of an intellectual. He approaches the case calmly, logically and methodically, weighing every piece of evidence. The problem is that his approach takes no account of the emotions involved and leaves no room for doubt. As one of the other jurors says, weighing up evidence is not a precise science, but Number 4 treats it as though it is. When convinced by Number 8's arguments, however, he concedes with good grace that there is now reasonable doubt in his mind and changes his vote to not guilty.
Number 10 and Number 3, although Number 4's allies, are completely different in their approach to the case. Whereas he approaches it with too much scientific detachment, they approach it with too much passion and prejudice. Number 10, played by Ed Begley, is prejudiced against the young man because of his social background. In a memorable scene he gives vent to his feelings in a long rant about "those people"; this could mean slum dwellers in general or could be a racist diatribe. (The defendant's ethnicity is never precisely established). One by one the other jurors, even those who have previously supported him, turn their backs on him. Number 3 is as violent in his feelings as Number 10, but his hatred of the young man arises less from social or racial prejudice than from his resentment of his own son, from whom he is estranged.
All of the parts are very well played, including the calm, authoritative Fonda. The best, however, was Lee J Cobb as Number 3. Whereas Begley's character is simply contemptible, Cobb's is, in a way, pitiable. He is full of anger, but we see that his anger arises out of the anguish caused by his failed relationship with his own son. This is, in fact, one of those rare films where everything works perfectly- the script, the acting and Sidney Lumet's direction which emphasises the claustrophobic atmosphere of the jury room and the tension of the plot. (Lumet is one of a select band of directors who have made a masterpiece with their first film). The result is a true classic of the cinema, the greatest-ever legal drama and one of the greatest films of all time. It did not do well at the Oscars, but that is because it had the misfortune to come out in the same year as another great film, "Bridge on the River Kwai".
Unlike some, I did not see the film as reflecting a preference for liberal political values over conservative ones; a belief in the importance of the presumption of innocence is not confined to liberals. Also, I did not see it necessarily as a vindication of the jury system. At the end of the film we feel a sense of relief that a possible miscarriage of justice has been averted, but we are also left with an uneasy feeling that, in real life, innocent people may have been convicted because their juries contained too many Wardens, Cobbs or Begleys and not enough Fondas. 10/10