Middle aged angst

Rating: 9/10 (13 April 2006)

12 jurors decide the fate of an 18 year old accused of murder who faces the chair. As the title implies there is tension and anger aplenty in the jurors room as the all-male cast goes at it including Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, E.G. Marshall, Jack Warden, Ed Begley and Jack Klugman. A great cast and great script directed by Sydney Lumet in his first film. Lumet would go on to have a string of hit films in the 60's and 70's including The Pawn Broker, Fail Safe, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon and Network but has been fairly inconsistent since. Lumet certainly knows how to get the best of his cast when he has great actors to work with and 12 Angry Men must have required some strenuous rehearsals. A remarkable screenplay from television writer Reginald Rose who had originally written this for television in 1954. Like the film Marty that had also been a 1953 teleplay that was adapted to the big screen in 1955 by it's writer Paddy Chayefsky, Rose does the film screenplay based on his television teleplay. This was only the second film that Rose wrote a screenplay for and he would only do a handful of movie screenplays in his career which was mostly television work. Polish-born cinematographer Boris Kaufman who was a veteran of Russian, French, Canadian and American films does the photography here. It was nominated for three Academy Awards including including major awards in Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay but amazingly no nominations for any of the ensemble cast. Fonda, did win a Bafta and Jussi Award for Best Actor and was nominated for a Golden Globe and Cobb also got a Golden Globe nomination as supporting actor but the large cast must have canceled each other out when it came to nominations for the Oscars and all the other various industry awards. Passionate, gripping, intense, compelling drama. It's obviously dated with it's all-white, all-male jury and may be a little too heavily centered on the jury room with not much room for anything else but it's great character development and holds up well. I would give it a 9.0 out of 10.