If Juror #2 is to be 94-year-old director Clint Eastwood’s final film, let the record reflect that this courtroom drama is a meaty, twisty, mainstream winner. Few directors of any age would have succeeded as well as Eastwood in delivering such a clean, unfussy throwback thriller that doesn’t just lean into its moral conundrums, but also dines on them. Working from a noose-tightening screenplay by Jonathan Abrams that always manages to pull itself back from the brink of airport novel-absurdity, Eastwood intricately weaves in layers of complexity while still keeping things accessible and downright compelling.
Eastwood’s best films as a director and an actor find him exploring the limits of justice and the concept of flawed men finding the courage to right their moral ship. Juror #2 explores both these ideas and more but does so while also asking viewers to interrogate themselves, their biases, and their self-ascribed sense of nobility, one that tends to disappear when their neck is on the line. The film is more evidence that the long arc of Eastwood’s moral universe has always bent towards justice, even if that arc is constantly warped by imperfect men and women often motivated by fear, self-interest and self-preservation.
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Justin Kemp, a juror in a prominent murder trial, encounters a moral conflict as he realizes his influence over the jury's decision. Struggling with the potential consequences, he faces the ethical challenge of possibly swaying the verdict to either convict or free the wrong individual, complicating his role significantly.
- Release Date
- November 1, 2024
- Runtime
- 114 Minutes
- Writers
- Jonathan A. Abrams
- Nicholas Hoult's moral dilemma is constantly engrossing.
- It tackles multiple legal and moral issues without getting preachy or too serious.
- It's great to see the 94-year-old Clint Eastwood delivering mass appeal adult-targeted entertainment.
- It requires the viewer to engage with the material in a deeper way than most mainstream films.
- It's ultimately just a courtroom drama, although an excellent one.
All three will factor into the jury service of Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult), a recovering alcoholic whose wife is about to give birth to their first child after a previous attempt ended in a miscarriage. Such a reasonable excuse is not enough to keep Justin from being selected for the murder trial of James Sythe (Gabriel Basso), who is accused of beating his girlfriend to death and dumping her body in a ditch after an argument at a local bar.
From the jump, Eastwood plays with — even calls us out for — our preconceived ideas about the doting husband who bravely turned his life around and the profane, accused murderer with the permanent scowl. James must be guilty because he has neck tattoos and Justin must be innocent because he loves his wife and can't wait to be a dad, right?
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It turns out Eastwood is just getting started. The prosecutor, Faith Killebrew (Toni Collette), is running for district attorney and can use an open and shut case to burnish her law-and-order bona fides. The facts certainly point to Sythe’s guilt; many witnesses saw him get into a fight with girlfriend Kendall (Francesca Eastwood) at the bar, which ended with her walking off in the rain and Sythe following in his car. There’s even an old man living in a trailer who saw someone near the ditch where she died. But the more Justin hears the evidence, the more he realizes that he was at the same bar that night, and he drove away at the same time as Sythe. And that deer Justin hit with his car moments later by the ditch where Kendall died? It may not have been a deer.
Eastwood Tackles America's Flawed Legal System
Films often position the viewer to see themselves as the hero so that we feel good about ourselves. Few films ask viewers to do the same for a hero who slowly realizes he may actually be the villain. This is the craftiness of Abrams’ script, which sees Justin conclude that he accidentally killed Kendall and Sythe is innocent. Such a coincidence could only happen in the movies, of course. But Eastwood is so focused on the moral quandary of what Justin should do next and in deconstructing a well-meaning legal system compromised by human frailty that we gladly go along for the ride.
The director doesn’t condemn the jury system, but rather reminds us that the system depends on an impartiality that mere mortals can aspire to but not provide. This throws up numerous roadblocks in the deliberation room as Justin tries to dissuade the jury from delivering a quick guilty verdict so his own guilt can be assuaged. To that end, he must fight the prejudices of the other jury members, including the obstinate Marcus (Cedric Yarbrough), whose work with at-risk kids has him sure that Sythe is a murderer. Plus, there’s the retired detective (J.K. Simmons) who thinks the crime is actually a hit-and-run, and he's willing to do some legally dubious off-hours research to prove it.
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The screws turn so slowly and irrevocably here that Juror #2 feels like a ‘90s era John Grisham movie adaptation directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Justin is in an impossible situation; if he convinces the jury to acquit Sythe, his conscience will be clear, but he may someday be discovered as Kendall’s killer. If the jury convicts Sythe, Justin would have to live with the guilt of not only killing an innocent woman but sending an innocent man to jail for it. Justin must hide all this from his wife as he weighs his moral responsibility with the fact that he’s got a child on the way and his life finally on the right track.
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Eastwood has us constantly reevaluating what we would do in the same situation. He also broadens his accusatory lens to touch upon the local police, who would prefer to arrest the first person they find and call it a win. Then there's Faith, the prosecutor with political ambitions that won’t stand in the way of pesky notions like innocence. Eastwood aims at a lot of targets here, but he does so with care and a steady pace to ensure that each character's motives seem justifiable in the moment. His camera (with cinematographer Yves Bélanger) keeps a very close eye on the terrific Hoult. He’s often half-shrouded in shadow and required to project non-verbal emotional shifts, which he does in subtle ways that keep us wondering, and invested in, what he’s thinking.
The 94-Year-Old Icon Has Still Got It
The eminently satisfying Juror #2 may not be one of Eastwood’s best films, but it is one of his craftiest; it takes a slightly preposterous story and uses it to examine an essential pedestal upon which democracy rests. And much as a flawed populace is destined, even with the best of intentions, to chip away at that pedestal, it’s nice to know that the man who told America to “make my day” believes that most of us will eventually do the right thing.
Warner Bros. will release Juror #2 in limited theaters on Friday, November 1.
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