12 Angry Men

Rating: 5/10 (30 April 2020)

Rose - Lumet's high theater on attitudes that often bedevil jury deliberation: Sloth (J7) and prejudice (10) are well-known, but also bias (Fonda (8) acting as defense co-counsel in creating unreasonable doubts and effectively stopping his co-jurors from further reflection to push the group-think as Cobb (3) had done earlier) and the struggle all jurors should engage by being objective while ultimately forming a conviction.
The men first appear, eleven, anyway, too quick to convict, then fall like dominos, too easy to acquit, running hot or cold, acceding to whichever advocate (J3 or 8) has his air-of-authority turned on high. It's a trying watch in grade below Lumet's 1982 gem, The-Verdict (wtih jurors Warden & Binns), that opens with a mawkish camera pan to beg our sympathy for a defendant of whom we know nothing, and ends by leaving the impartial viewer feeling that maybe justice was not done after-all. But there's plenty of passion with the power to make us think, and that's always a plus.
And it's worth keeping this in mind when watching and being moved to-and-fro by the passions at play: It's fair to judge the personalities of the 12 jurors, to a point, and the workings of their deliberations, but their value as such and any vote they render either early or late in the process is completely within their own purview as they in the story sat through the trial and we the viewers did not, excepting the judge's flat closing instruction. It might then be wise to not vest heavily on the guilt question (2.5/4).