Review of Juror #2: Not very good due to the craziness of the plot

From the 1980s to the 1990s, we had a golden age of legal thrillers, including Jagged Blade (1985), The Accused (1988), Presumed Innocent (1990), A Few Good Men (1992) ). ), Philadelphia (1993), The Pelican Brief (1993), Primal Fear (1996), A Time to Kill (1996), A Civil Action (1998) and many others.

Clint Eastwood’s Juror No. 2, set in the present day, is clearly reminiscent of those films, but introduces a plot twist quite early on that is so ridiculous it’s almost comical. You’ll also recognize obvious echoes of the endlessly excellent 1957 film Twelve Angry Men, although the title here should have been “Twelve Jurors Who Either Have a Secret Plan or Just Want to Go Home.”

Nicholas Hoult does a great job as Justin Kemp, who we are told is a “regional magazine writer” in Savannah, Georgia (where Eastwood filmed Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil in 1997) and is married to a schoolteacher named Ellie (Zoey Deutch), who is in the final days of a high-risk pregnancy. When Justin receives a jury summons, he tries to use his wife’s condition to exonerate himself, but fails. He’s assigned to a high-profile murder trial that, we’re told, will make or break the career of prosecutor Faith (FAITH!) Killebrew (the great Toni Collette, with a Southern accent dripping with molasses), who is running for district attorney. , because the prosecutors in these films almost always have political ambitions. (Hey, Toni Collette and Nicholas Hoult reunited 22 years after About a Boy!)

Now. This is a case that has attracted enormous media attention and is expected to shape the upcoming election. Unfortunately, the truth is that in real life this will not be a high-profile trial. It’s the all-too-common story of a slacker named James Site (Gabriel Basso) and his tumultuous and abusive relationship with longtime girlfriend Kendall Carter (played by Francesca Eastwood, Clint’s daughter). One rainy night, after James and Kendall get into a fight at a place called Rowdy’s Hideout, James breaks a bottle of beer and becomes increasingly dangerous, Kendall runs out and walks home along a dark and winding country road. The next day, a hiker finds Kendall’s body in a creek bed. James is accused of her murder, Faith is the prosecutor, and her former law school classmate Eric Resnick (the always reliable Chris Messina) is the public defender.

SPOILER ALERT, although it’s in the trailer: Justin was also at Roadie’s Hideout the night Kendall died. He ordered but didn’t drink – he’s been sober for several years – and then drove in the rain, crashing into what he thought was a deer. But maybe it wasn’t a deer. Maybe it was…Kendall? And now, by the greatest of coincidences, Justin has been selected as a juror in this very trial. (Oddly enough, despite the fact that this was such a publicized case and Kendall’s death happened the same night Justin was at the bar, he didn’t even hear about this tragedy until he was in the courtroom. Really?)

Now Justin faces a moral dilemma: will he come forward and risk ruining his life and destroying his family, or orchestrate a conviction or mistrial for Site, who may in fact be innocent?

Juror #2 is full of unrealistic scenes. Witnesses in a trial are allowed to make speeches that you can only make in the movies. When jurors are allowed to visit a crime scene, they are asked not to talk about the details of the case, but they do so anyway. The jury consists of stock characters, including J.K. Simmons as a retired homicide detective who didn’t reveal this information during the investigation. predict; Cedric Yarborough as the director of the local Boys and Girls Club, who has a vested interest in Site and does not care whether Site is guilty of this particular crime, and Leslie Bibb as a stay-at-home mother who volunteers to serve as jury foreman, notes that she had been the lead in two previous cases that had ended in mistrials, and that if the jury deadlocked, her husband would take great pleasure in it. Wait, what?

Oh, and there’s Kiefer Sutherland as Justin’s AA sponsor Larry, who is also a lawyer, and yes, there’s a moment where Larry tells Justin to give him a dollar because that means he’s now officially Justin’s lawyer.

At the age of 94, Clint Eastwood still has a knack for directing films and presenting situations with real-life political, legal and social parallels. The actors sink their teeth into the juicy material. There is never a moment when the story lulls you to sleep. Alas, this is all so… ridiculous due to the wrong script.