Skip to main content

12 Angry Men

Image
By

1957
Directed By Sidney Lumet
Starring Henry Fonda, Lee J Cobb and Martin Balsam

I’m not really going out on a limb when I say that 12 Angry Men is great movie. It’s an important film that has held up beautifully over the last 50 years. If you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor and watch it soon.  I’m truly sad that it has taken me this long to watch it and I can honestly say it is one of the best films I have ever seen.  Endorsements like that are often thrown around so I’m fully aware of how little it can mean to proclaim a movie “the best movie.”  Earlier today I saw someone on twitter say that “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes was the best movie since Godzilla, Oscar worthy.”  So, I get it, not the best way to start a review but trust me there is a really good reason why this film is so highly regarded.

12 Angry Men is a courtroom drama where almost the entire film plays out in the jury room. Performance is the focus of Sidney Lumet’s 1957 masterpiece. The film is shot in black and white, the sets are minimal (a room, a table, 12 chairs) and the camera work is subtle. Nothing about the design of this film calls attention to itself. We are only given our characters words and reactions. Considering the gravity of this films subject matter I’m grateful we are allowed to take in the film without any stylistic distractions. Henry Fonda who is the lone voice of descent gives a performance that easily stands up to the Oscar winning performance he gave in Grapes of Wrath.

The plot of the film is very straight forward. A jury deliberates over a capital murder case. It’s clear when the judge is giving the jury its instructions this is an open and shut case. When the jury enters the room the atmosphere is light and somewhat jovial but that quickly changes when the jury takes its first vote.

This film never tells us if the accused is innocent or guilty, it is beside the point. 12 Angry Men is an examination of the American justice system and it plays just as relevant today as it did 50 years ago. With recent events in Oklahoma I hope Americans will take a long sober non-reactionary look at our justice system and capital punishment. Sadly, I have little faith that we will make any drastic changes. I do hope the next time 12 “peers” of an accused step into the court room of a capital murder trial they will have seen this film and understand the magnitude of what they are about to do.


12 Angry Men is currently streaming on Netflix 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Explaining the Ending of No Country for Old Men

By
No Country for Old Men is a tense, spare, and philosophical thriller that upends traditional narrative expectations. While it contains the elements of a crime drama—drug deals, hitmen, shootouts—it refuses to follow a conventional path. By the time the film ends, the central conflict seems unresolved, the villain walks away, and the protagonist we’ve been following disappears offscreen. To understand the film’s ending, one must look beyond plot and consider its themes: fate, violence, moral decay, and the erosion of order in the modern world. The Narrative Setup The story begins with Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), a Vietnam veteran who discovers a drug deal gone wrong in the Texas desert and makes off with $2 million in cash. Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a remorseless hitman, is sent to retrieve the money. Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), a weary and introspective lawman, tries to make sense of the violence unfolding around him. At first glance, the film appears to set up a c...
1 comment
Read More

Explaining the Ending of MULHOLLAND DRIVE

By
David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive remains one of the most haunting and enigmatic films ever made. It operates like a riddle that refuses to be solved, luring the viewer into a world where time, memory, and identity dissolve into one another. What begins as a mysterious, almost whimsical Hollywood fairy tale gradually transforms into a psychological nightmare. By the end, it’s clear that what we’ve been watching is not a mystery to be unraveled but an emotional landscape, the mind of a woman caught between fantasy and despair. The film tells the story of two women, Betty Elms and Rita, whose lives intertwine after Rita survives a car crash and loses her memory. Betty, a bright and optimistic aspiring actress freshly arrived in Los Angeles, takes her in. Together, they embark on an investigation into Rita’s identity, which unfolds like a noir detective story bathed in dreamlike light. Everything about this world feels heightened: Betty’s charm, the coincidence of events, and the ease with w...
1 comment
Read More

Explaining the Ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey

By
Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is a masterpiece of science fiction cinema, known for its ambitious themes, pioneering visual effects, and cryptic storytelling. The film culminates in one of the most enigmatic endings in cinematic history, as astronaut Dave Bowman undergoes a surreal journey through a cosmic gateway and is transformed into a new lifeform known as the "Star Child." To understand the ending, one must consider the film’s structure, symbolism, and philosophical inquiries into human evolution, technology, and transcendence. The Journey to the Infinite The final act begins after Dave Bowman disconnects HAL 9000, the malfunctioning AI that had killed his crew. Alone on the spaceship Discovery One , Bowman continues toward Jupiter, following a signal emitted from a monolith discovered on the Moon earlier in the film. These monoliths—rectangular, black, and featureless—are central to the film’s themes. Each appearance marks a leap in human evolution:...
Post a Comment
Read More