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Something of a combination of a watered-down 12 Angry Men and a touch of Runaway Jury, the latest (and potentially last) film directed by Clint Eastwood, Juror #2, tells the story of Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult), who gets picked to be on a jury for a high-profile murder case involving a man (Gabriel Brasso) accused of killing his girlfriend after a fight in a bar. Kemp’s wife, Allison (Zoey Deutch), is expecting the couple's first child after experiencing a miscarriage during her first pregnancy, so Justin tries to get out of jury duty, but the diligent judge (Amy Aquino) doesn’t let him off the hook. The film spends a great deal of time establishing Justin as a good man, eager to help his wife and start the family the two have been longing for, so we can be fairly confident something bad is about to reveal itself.
Sure enough, as the facts of the case begin to come out, Justin realizes that the bar where the couple argued is the same bar where he, a recovering alcoholic, stopped that same night, ordered a drink, but never drank it. On the ride home that night in the pouring rain, he hit what he thought was a deer, and he begins to think that he actually hit the murder victim in the trial. Written by Jonathan Abrams, Juror #2 then turns into an investigative piece and the story of Justin not wanting to send an innocent man to prison but also not wanting to take responsibility for his actions and destroy his own family in the process. When the jury goes in to deliberate, he and another juror (J.K. Simmons) are the only two who don’t see the case as open and shut, and they begin the slow process of trying to cast doubt on the facts of the case. The two even start investigating the details of the case on their own, which is legally not allowed, but that’s the least of Justin’s worries.
Toni Collette plays the district attorney prosecuting the case, with Chris Messina as the defendant’s court-appointed attorney whose defense is thorough if not convincing. Still, just as the jury is about to come back with a verdict, even Collette begins to have doubts as to Basso’s guilt.
So many of the decisions made in the making of Juror #2 seems very deliberate. For example, the defendant is white, with a history of being a drug-dealing scumbag, so the audience won’t feel too bad if he gets wrongfully convicted. But Eastwood isn’t trying to tell the story of a miscarriage of justice in the traditional sense; he wants to test how we feel if Justin gets away with it and the wrong man gets a life sentence just to protect this supposedly good guy. How good is he if he lets this happen?
At one point, even his wife starts to suspect the truth, and she seems good with Justin's plan. At that point, the truth might be closer to coming out than anyone is comfortable with. And the film’s final moment is an unexpected gut punch and the perfect way for Eastwood to go out with a bang, clearly not giving a shit whether audiences like the feeling they’re left with or not.
There are a few nice supporting players, such as Kiefer Sutherland as Justin’s attorney and AA sponsor, Leslie Bibb as a jury foreperson, and Cedric Yarbrough as another juror who has something of a personal grudge against people like the defendant, absolutely refusing to change his vote. Juror #2 isn’t Eastwood’s best work—in many ways, it resembles a three-location (courtroom, jury room, Justin’s home) filmed play—but it’s still a solid closing argument for a worthy career behind the camera, and the movie absolutely kept me guessing as to how/if things would wrap up convincingly. And for the most part, I think it does.
The film is now playing in a limited theatrical release at AMC River East.
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