12 Angry Men Review
Oct. 22nd, 2005 12:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearWatched 12 Angry Men last night for the first time. It seems that every time ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cholten99 and I discuss films we discover that one of us hasn't seen a film that the other one considers required viewing. Cue scrambling around for a copy and tying the uneducated one to the sofa while the other one puts the film on.
12 Angry Men was one I hadn't seen, but which I was more than happy to watch.
This film is extremely intelligent - it has to be, since it is confined to a single room and a single real-time discussion, with no flashbacks or action sequences to add excitement. It survives on excellent dialogue and masterful acting alone, both of which it has in abundance.
Basically, it's a jury deciding the verdict on a murder case, where the death penalty is going to be enforced. At the start, 11 of the men say guilty, and only one says not guilty. The rest of the film shows how the other 11 are gradually brought round to the not guilty verdict. This really isn't giving too much away, since it's obvious from the start that this is what's going to happen. The interest and the genius lies in how this comes about.
Lots of different issues are brought to bear, but it's most interesting that those who swing over to not guilty first are the ones who are open to discussion, while those who insist on guilty the longest are the aggressive, irrational ones (with the exception of one, who is eventually persuaded by logic). Prejudice is brought to bear (the defendant is Hispanic, while all the jurors are white), and each piece of evidence is analysed and tested to demonstrate that it is unreliable.
There's a great range of characters and they're all well-drawn and interesting. It didn't surprise me that the ones I liked most were the ones who formed the core of the "not guilty" argument. However, the most interesting thing about the film is this: I believe they reached the correct verdict, but I also think it's likely that the defendant was guilty.
It all comes down to your interpretation of "reasonable doubt", in the end. At first glance, the whole case was pretty cut and dried. It's only when each individual aspect of it is examined that doubt begins to creep in. This is the case with most things - the more you analyse and dissect something, the less clear cut it becomes and the more options there are for different interpretation. In the case of the film, I think the doubt that creeps in is sufficient to come back with a "not guilty" verdict, despite the fact that the circumstantial evidence suggests the defendant is the one most likely to have committed the crime.
Is it better to risk setting a guilty man free than to risk sending an innocent man to his death? I believe so. Besides, in the case of the jurors in the film, those who most strongly support a guilty verdict are the ones who have the least objective reasons for their opinion.
I would highly recommend this film to anyone who hasn't seen it.
cholten99 and I discuss films we discover that one of us hasn't seen a film that the other one considers required viewing. Cue scrambling around for a copy and tying the uneducated one to the sofa while the other one puts the film on.12 Angry Men was one I hadn't seen, but which I was more than happy to watch.
This film is extremely intelligent - it has to be, since it is confined to a single room and a single real-time discussion, with no flashbacks or action sequences to add excitement. It survives on excellent dialogue and masterful acting alone, both of which it has in abundance.
Basically, it's a jury deciding the verdict on a murder case, where the death penalty is going to be enforced. At the start, 11 of the men say guilty, and only one says not guilty. The rest of the film shows how the other 11 are gradually brought round to the not guilty verdict. This really isn't giving too much away, since it's obvious from the start that this is what's going to happen. The interest and the genius lies in how this comes about.
Lots of different issues are brought to bear, but it's most interesting that those who swing over to not guilty first are the ones who are open to discussion, while those who insist on guilty the longest are the aggressive, irrational ones (with the exception of one, who is eventually persuaded by logic). Prejudice is brought to bear (the defendant is Hispanic, while all the jurors are white), and each piece of evidence is analysed and tested to demonstrate that it is unreliable.
There's a great range of characters and they're all well-drawn and interesting. It didn't surprise me that the ones I liked most were the ones who formed the core of the "not guilty" argument. However, the most interesting thing about the film is this: I believe they reached the correct verdict, but I also think it's likely that the defendant was guilty.
It all comes down to your interpretation of "reasonable doubt", in the end. At first glance, the whole case was pretty cut and dried. It's only when each individual aspect of it is examined that doubt begins to creep in. This is the case with most things - the more you analyse and dissect something, the less clear cut it becomes and the more options there are for different interpretation. In the case of the film, I think the doubt that creeps in is sufficient to come back with a "not guilty" verdict, despite the fact that the circumstantial evidence suggests the defendant is the one most likely to have committed the crime.
Is it better to risk setting a guilty man free than to risk sending an innocent man to his death? I believe so. Besides, in the case of the jurors in the film, those who most strongly support a guilty verdict are the ones who have the least objective reasons for their opinion.
I would highly recommend this film to anyone who hasn't seen it.
