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‘Juror #2’ delights with narrative twists of courtroom drama
‘JUROR #2’ Rated PG-13
Courtroom dramas have the ability to be riveting entertainment that capture one’s rapt attention for every possible twist and turn during heightened moments of revealing developments.
Classic films, like “To Kill a Mockingbird” with Henry Fonda defending a black man against a false rape charge in small-town Alabama in 1932 or “Witness for the Prosecution” with Charles Laughton defending Tyrone Power accused of murder, have produced enthralling courtroom dramas.
None of the many films in the genre may surpass the spellbinding allure of Sidney Lumet’s classic 1957 legal drama “12 Angry Men,” where a dozen men in a New York City murder trial deliberate on the fate of a teenager accused of killing his abusive father.
As Juror #8, Henry Fonda is the only one who initially questions the evidence and resists an immediate rush to judgment and wants to have discussion on the case becauase he has a feeling of reasonable doubt.
Without a long, torturous summation of the path to the eventual outcome, it should be noted that “12 Angry Men,” with its excellent cast of notable actors and nominated for an Academy Award Best Picture, is arguably the best legal drama of all time.
Well into his tenth decade, Clint Eastwood is an institution all to himself in a long career as actor, director and producer, most recently starring in 2021’s “Cry Macho.” His likely final directorial effort may be “Juror #2,” which seems largely inspired by “12 Angry Men.”
In Sidney Lumet’s film, an honorable man stands unaided by his fellow jurors to not reach a hasty verdict. The similar situation in “Juror #2” hinges less on ethical qualms and more on muddled moral grounds.
The titular character turns out to be Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult), a writer for a Georgia magazine that he describes as not being “Vanity Fair.” His wife Allison (Zoey Deutch) is in the final stage of a precarious pregnancy.
Summoned to serve on a jury for a murder trial, Justin wants to get out of this duty since the couple suffered a miscarriage the year before, and he feels the need to stay close to home.
The judge (Amy Aquino) in this case fails to entertain his request to be excused, and neither the prosecutor Faith Killebrew (Toni Collette) nor the defense attorney Eric Resnick (Chris Messina) object to his selection for the murder case.
The accused is James Michael Sythe (Gabriel Basso), an ill-tempered guy in a volatile relationship with his girlfriend Kendall (Francesca Eastwood). After a night of drinking at a local bar, James becomes abusive and Kendall walks away alone on a rainy night.
Many people at the bar witness the altercation between the couple in the parking lot and notice James driving away, seemingly following her in his car as she takes off on foot down a dark highway.
The next day, Kendall’s body is discovered by a hiker in a creek off the side of the road. An old man living in a nearby trailer identifies James as the man he saw that night standing on the highway near the scene of the crime.
Political ramifications enter into the courtroom case because Prosecutor Killebrew is campaigning for district attorney in the fast-approaching election and needs to prove her crimefighting credentials to pull off an electoral victory.
A major question that arises early in the judicial proceedings is whether Justin, known only as Juror #2 during the trial, finds himself questionably compromised since he realizes he was at the same roadside bar on the night Kendall was killed.
As a recovering alcoholic, Justin feels not only guilty for ordering a drink he didn’t touch, but on the drive home he hit something on the road. As he got out the car, all he could see was a “deer crossing” sign and assumed that’s what he may have hit.
Not only did Justin tell his wife that the damage to the car happened on another road so that she wouldn’t know he stopped at a bar, but he develops a nagging feeling during the trial that maybe he’s the one at fault.
This is where the trial gets interesting because the morally conflicted Justin is at first the lone holdout on a guilty verdict, which would solve his personal dilemma of wanting to move on.
But then a retired cop (J.K. Simmons) serving as a juror starts to poke around with his own unsanctioned investigation, managing to get himself booted off the jury in the process. Simmons, as always, is a remarkable presence, and it’s unfortunate his role is rather limited.
Quitting may not be a word in Clint Eastwood’s vocabulary, but if “Juror #2” is his last cinematic effort, at least he leaves on a decent note.
In what was a curious strategy, the Warner Bros. studio had a very limited release of “Juror #2” in November, but now it is streaming on HBO’s Max, and it is definitely worth seeing.
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.
