Juror #2 (8/10)

by Tony Medley

Director Clint Eastwood rarely disappoints, and this is another good one. From a script by Jonathan Abrams, Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult) is a recovering alcoholic whose partner, Allison Crewson (Zoey Deutch), is very pregnant. He is chosen to be a juror in a murder trial of James Michael Sythe (Gabriel Basso) who is accused of murdering his girlfriend.

The prosecuting attorney is Faith Killebrew (Toni Collette), who is running for District Attorney. Defending Sythe is Eric Resnick (Chris Messina) and there seems to be an unusual friendly relationship between the two.

This is akin to Twelve Angry Men (1957) Sidney Lumet’s film starring Henry Fonda that received several Oscar® nominations, although that film receives no credit in this one. In that one, one juror held out for not guilty because he believed the accused was not guilty. In this one, Justin knows for a fact that James is not guilty, but he has a terrible conflict of interest.

The pace and acting are terrific and the story believable as Justin attempts to sway the others to save the defendant without revealing why he knows that James is not guilty.

It jumps between juror deliberations and the relationship between Jutin and Allison. Eastwood keeps the tension up as the jurors fight and deliberate. There are two supporting actors who deserve mention for different reasons. J.K. Simmons is a juror, and he gives his usual fine performance. But it’s a fraud to list Keifer Sutherland as the fourth actor in this film because he is in it so little that he couldn’t have been on the set for more than a couple of days, unless most of his performance ended up on the cutting room floor.

But that’s a minor criticism, this is a believable dilemma, and Eastwood has presented it brilliantly. If this is Clint's swan song, he goes out on top.