We stand on the shoulders of this giant

Rating: Null/10 (17 October 2004)

The fact that the plot of this film is still credible and interesting nearly 50 years after it was made is a testimony to its strength. Each week for the last 20 years we have been bombarded with "law and order" shows which examine the guilt or innocence of suspects. (Even Jack Klugman from this movie got his own TV series on the subject called "Quincy", which was mostly about freeing people falsely accused, and nobody calls Klugman a bleeding heart.) *Some* of those thousands of shows are more interesting and plausible than 12 Angry Men. But as Isaac Newton once said, "If I have seen farther than others, it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants." People who nitpick and point out flaws in this script are failing to note that this show is one of the "giants" upon which all modern scripts are resting upon.
I did a calculation and found that the average number of *movies* that these 12 actors have been in is 66.75. At random I took another contemporary movie that was similarly rated, ("Sunset Boulevard") and came up with the number 79.08 for the top 12 actors. Hmm. Maybe I should go watch Sunset Boulevard. Maybe it's more fair to compare "12 Angry Men" with a modern movie instead. A similarly rated Drama, "Schindler's List", scores only 46.41. Of course, these films are getting the benefit of the statistic because I'm counting only their first 12 actors, not the ENTIRE CAST.