Hooked to it

Rating: 9/10 (9 February 2003)

When I took the DVD of this film along with a couple of other movies from library, I postponed seeing this one after reading about the movie in the back cover of DVD. It had been mentioned that all but 3 minutes of the movie has been shot in a room. The movie was black and white and there was no female cast!!. Finally when I found some time when there was no other thing to do, I watched this movie, my god I was hooked. This movie is a great lesson to new directors and screen play writers as to how a great movie can be made without all the gorgeous locations, millions of dolllars, graphic special effects etc. Infact once the cast get into the jury room there is not even a back ground score. All natural sound recorded at the set. As some body else had mentioned Lee J cobb steals most of the scenes, but Henry Fonda's performance is great as a soft sell/submissive player. He carefully releases one card after other from his hand at precise moments.

For example he does not tell any one he has a switch blade knife untill others really push him and challenge him about the rarity of the knife. That is a genius.
Infact I watched the movie two times back to back and I could not help but marvel where all this talent nowadays. I was tempted to watch it third successive time but did not do it because it was late.
A must watch. Don't miss it