12 Angry Men: Life is in their hands - Death is on their minds

Pic Courtesy IMDb

Movie:12 Angry Men

Date of Release: 13/04/1957

Duration:1h36min

Director:Sidney Lumet

Based on: A teleplay of the same name by Reginald Rose

Review

61 years ago on this day a movie was released that was for the most part shot on a single set. The movie is about the 12 jurors who after having heard the case are sent into the Jury room to come out with a verdict. The case before them is of a man/boy (18 year old) who may or may not have stabbed his father to death. The verdict will hold only if the jury is unanimous.

As the men enter the jury room they are all impatient and just want to get done with the decision making. They decide on taking a preliminary vote, one of the twelve jurors, votes ‘not guilty’. The other jurors visibly show their anger at Juror No.8 who voted not guilty.

Juror No.8 begins to explain why he thinks the accused is not guilty. He goes on to point at the murder weapon, of which he has an exact copy. He goes on to explain that the switch blade that the prosecutors called “rare” is in-fact so common that even he has one. This gets the other 11 thinking. But the question is can one man’s reason change the minds of all others present in the room?

As the jurors deliberate, they discuss various points of the trial – There is a primary witness who actually saw the murder happen. As they deliberate, they take several factors into consideration – one of them being the witness’s vanity.

This leads to further examining the next witness who also claimed to see the accused run away from the scene of crime but could he really have done so in the span of time he heard a thud to the time it took for him to reach the window?

This causes more doubt. Soon the jurors are evenly divided in one half thinking the accused is guilty and the other thinking he’s not guilty.

As they proceed further to examine the weapon and the stab wounds, they delve deeper to consider if the accused could have inflicted the wounds on the deceased. They also need to consider the fact that the boy had in-fact screamed at his father threatening to ‘kill’ him.

As the deliberation progresses we can’t help but face our personal bias. Just like many people today who scream “burn the killer”, a juror also says the same exact thing! “Burn the boy.”

While watching the movie it does seem a tad bit invasive but at the same time the viewer can’t look away. As someone watching the movie on screen, I felt I was eavesdropping on a conversation I had no business listening to yethere I am writing a post on everything I saw and heard.

The jurors turn on each other. They verbally call out each other. One of the jurors goes to the extent of accusing another juror of voting not guilty, only because the juror who so voted is also from a slum.

These are all little things but these are a lot of little things. Just like that we start taking all the “little” things in the trial and as the deliberation continues, these little things cease to be just little things.

This is probably the best movie to understand ‘reasonable doubt’.

Do the jurors come to a consensus? Do they continue to deliberate and only open their personal can of worms? Will the boy live? Will it just be another thing a citizen does, disguised under the garb of ‘duty’? Will the jurors understand the magnitude of their conclusion?

To know answers to these questions, watch the movie.

My Rating: 4.9/5

Recommend: I highly recommend this to anyone who hasn’t already watched it and to those who want a good 96 minutes of self-reflection.