Criterion Collection, Spine #591 / IMDb / Wikipedia / My Collection

From Criterion: 12 Angry Men, by Sidney Lumet, may be the most radical courtroom drama in cinema history. A behind-closed-doors look at the American legal system that is as riveting as it is spare, this iconic adaptation of Reginald Rose’s teleplay stars Henry Fonda as the dissenting member on a jury of white men ready to pass judgment on a Puerto Rican teenager charged with murdering his father. The result is a saga of epic proportions that plays out over a tense afternoon in one sweltering room. Lumet’s electrifying snapshot of 1950s America on the verge of change is one of the great feature film debuts.

First movie out the gate - picked by our good friends over at r/criterion. Neither Mrs. Lady Zedd or I had seen it but I did have some clue what it was about. An interesting, dramatically suspenseful film, to talk about it much beyond “12 jurors, 11 votes of guilty, 1 not so sure” would be to give too much away. Fonda is (of course) the strong, soft spoken hero of the film - his Juror #8 is who we’d all hope was sitting our trial, if we ever found ourself in that unenviable position. A solid movie to get the year started right.

I can only really add that I’ve only sat one jury and the main driving point during deliberations was getting out of there. I had initially not wanted to get picked and thought I came up with a “perfect” plan for escaping my civil responsibility (I was 19, of course I’d be able to out think a court of law right?) but once I was snared, I took the matter very seriously. It was all decidedly small potatoes but very fascinating. I looked forward to deliberating but only because I’d been enthralled with the process, I assumed everyone would be - our deliberation took only a few minutes. We voted and were split, there was some talking about beating traffic home and everyone just voted not guilty. That’s how I’d actually felt so I couldn’t complain but it seemed like afternoon traffic decided this person’s fate, not the facts of the case. I suppose that was what was at the heart of the film but in a much larger case.