A good courtroom drama but not without problems

Rating: 7/10 (9 September 2011)

The interesting thing about 12 Angry Men is that you come away from it and can't honestly say if the jury were right to acquit the accused man. The film never really answers the question of whether he was guilty or not. It just simply says that it was impossible to be sure. The film is ultimately about the Not Proved verdict.
At least I certainly hope that we as an audience were not supposed to leave the film thinking that the accused man was definitely innocent. The counter-evidence brought to our attention by juror no. 8 (Henry Fonda) is often not especially convincing but seems to be taken very seriously by progressively more and more men in the room until inevitably we have a unanimous Not Guilty verdict. An example of this, is when Fonda successfully gets the others to acknowledge that the old man witness is unreliable, yet then goes on to base a major part of his own evidence on the old fellows testimony that he took fifteen seconds to get to the door to witness the murderer fleeing. Fonda clearly assumes that this man he has determined as unreliable would get his exact timings spot on in a moment of heightened emotion. It may seem like a minor point but there are just a little too many of these small inconsistent assumptions littering 12 Angry Men for me to feel it was an entirely successful exercise. I really couldn't help shake the notion that Fonda's character had his own agenda and was simply unwilling to back down. Perhaps he was the most persuasive man in the room and that was ultimately the reason that the decision was made. It's difficult to really say with any certainty that the accused was innocent at all. Did they really make the correct decision?
Setting this consideration aside, one thing the movie does have in abundance is stellar acting talent. The 12 members of the jury are well played by all. While the direction is simple but highly efficient; it is not an easy task to set a movie in one room with dialogue the only action on offer but Sidney Lumet does keep things moving along at a good pace and maintains the interest. This is certainly a good movie despite my misgivings. For me it does ultimately have a definite ambiguous quality and if that was the intention then I can hardly argue with that.