"12 Angry Men" is a consistently fascinating film, but one where it's conclusions don't hold up in a lot of modern-day democracies...

Rating: 10/10 (17 February 2008)

I liked the observation that even juries can become suspicious of one another despite the fact that they're all working toward the same end, and since legal teams are all human they may still be subject to the same propensity to err as the rest of us. There were times however when I disagreed with the influences that brought about the verdict. One of those cornerstones is the notion of 'reasonable doubt'. Clearly this particular principal isn't applied as strenuously as the justice system says it ought to be in all cases that are heard today. My bet is that often these days verdicts are reached by the appeal of common consensus, and any apparent holes are ironed out by majority opinion instead of meriting closer inspection. As one juror says, you can use the counter-argument of "supposing it happened this way?!" for just about anything. If that is meant to be the clincher that makes adjudicators unsure, then almost nobody would be getting locked away even with lots of admissible evidence stacked up against them.
Secondly, unlike on its first general release in 1957, the death penalty is no longer enforced in a heck of a lot of places. In a film where so much of the drama derives from a miscalculation in good faith being enough to condemn an innocent to death, the stakes are no longer quite so high in a lot of territories, which speaks well of the modern age. Now I'm not arguing that wrongful imprisonment is in any way some kind of a picnic, but when you have the facility of a seemingly endless appeals system that can be fully exploited by a canny lawyer, the intricacies of the justice system somehow don't seem quite so immediate or important anymore. We know that sentencing is no longer the final word, because we hear of judgements quashed and rulings overturned virtually every day.
... and thirdly, does any ordinary member of the public nowadays really have the confidence to believe that a juror could be so observant to notice marks left by a pair of spectacles?! Many are probably on the verge of dozing off when testimonies are being heard, or at least they would only be listening to the account without having the alertness to take in every minute detail about the personage in front of them, as well. I would think that juries have fallen into a habit of working with details that are overtly given to them by officials, not scrutinising closely enough to allow for consideration of things that they happen to have noticed themselves.
Whether or not such idealistic events are indeed credible in these times, "12 Angry Men" is unfailingly, rigorously intelligent in its deconstruction of deliberation. I only wish that in the real world we were without doubt certain to arrive at the proper outcome, so long as we made sure to follow all of the 'rules'...