An ever-timely call to the human conscience

Rating: 9/10 (6 August 2016)

No matter how prejudiced, preoccupied or plain angry you are, there's always a reason to slow down, step back and take a second look at things that seem obvious on the surface. That's basically the message of 12 Angry Men.
It's been more than 50 years since this film was released, and obviously the rules of cinematography have changed since then. Now such theatrical films may feel somewhat odd or staged, and, indeed, 12 Angry Men is more of a play than a film. However, it's a rare occasion when the pure idea professed by a film becomes a manifesto that goes beyond a particular epoch or style, acquiring that kind of topicality that lives forever as long as there is a mankind.
There's no point describing the events of the film, for they only serve as a means of delivering the film's message and call to our conscience, waking it up from the heavy dreams of our compromise-ridden lives. But it's the actors' work that turns the slow-paced narrative into a vivid showcase of emotions and characters. And even though Henry Fonda is the only big star of the cast, I can't say that the job is done by him alone. On the contrary, it's the men his characters confronts that really give the stage enough diversity and naturalness to feel real and true.
The expected happy ending of the film doesn't really chime in with the gloomy cinema trends of the modern cinema. However, the hope that it brings has a deep symbolic meaning. 12 Angry Men isn't about opposing good and evil people. It doesn't divide us, instead, it tries telling us that, despite how we look and act right now, there's something good and honest and kind in all of us, and the future of this world, represented in this film by the life of a young boy tried for murder, depends on our ability to stay true to those sides of ours and find them within, however muddied they might be. Each of those twelve jurors had certain principles that he was ready to put above his personal fancy. And I can only hope that in the world of today our own anger, vanity or indifference are still not strong enough to make us lose our light completely.