Thank you, Your Honor. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury ILTBTA, we intend to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the 1957 legal drama 12 Angry Men is not only a great movie, but also one worth your time (if not watching it then at least reading the rest of this post). Over the course of this post, we will closely examine the plot, investigate crucial context with the help of our clerical assistant Wikipedia, and end with our overall assessment. We ask that you closely review every joke, footnote, and overwrought plot description so that you may come to your own informed opinion. Thank you, and let’s begin.
Previews
What, if anything, did we know about this coming attraction before we watched it?
Ellen: They’re men, they’re angry - tell me something I don’t know.
Tyler: I know the broadest strokes of the plot, but little else. Time to fill in some blanks!
Plots & Feelings
This one’s pretty self-explanatory.
Short Version (courtesy of IMDb): The jury in a New York City murder trial is frustrated by a single member whose skeptical caution forces them to more carefully consider the evidence before jumping to a hasty verdict.
Long Version (modified from Wikipedia and formatted to fit your screen):
An imposing upward angle shot of the New York County Courthouse kicks the doors down and ushers us into the long shot through the halls and into Courtroom 228. The judge lackadaisically informs the jury that this case carries a mandatory death sentence if the 18-year-old is convicted, and that their job is to separate the “facts from the fancy” and see if there’s any of that pesky reasonable doubt hanging around. The twelve jurors file into the deliberation room as the credits file across the screen and the scene ends with a fade out of the defendant’s young face.
Tyler: The judge acting like he’d rather be anywhere but there really sets the tone and curiously starts the movie with a (literal and figurative) yawn. I have to imagine it’s starting slow to eventually build up over the course of the deliberations.
Tyler: And having the kid's face fade out over the deliberation room is a clever bit of editing given that his life/death is hanging over their heads. It’s also the only shot we get of him in the entire movie.
Ellen: It was definitely on my mind, as my notes said “they’re going to sentence this big fish-eyed baby??”
It’s the hottest day of the year, and the jurors shuffle about, trying to open the windows and preparing to deliberate. The foreman has the men sit in number order around the table, which is convenient for us, because we don’t learn anyone’s name. As far as most jurors are concerned, there’s not much to discuss. The facts as laid out by the prosecution are these: a poor 18-year-old with a semi-violent past stands accused of stabbing his abusive father to death after an argument. Their downstairs neighbor, an old man, testified to hearing the defendant threaten to kill his father and the body hitting the floor. A woman from across the street saw the man stabbed through the windows of a passing elevated train. Our foreman has everyone cast a preliminary vote by show of hands, with the only “not guilty” coming from Juror 8.
Tyler: While Juror 8 is the only one with the cajones to actually raise his hand, you could tell that a few of the others were also waffling in their vote and fell victim to some peer pressure/groupthink.
Juror 8 has doubts, and by golly, they seem reasonable to him. The others are confused, to say the least. Initial arguments range from kids these days having no respect for their fathers (unlike Juror 3’s son, but do not ask him further questions thank you), the impact of growing up in the slums, and … wanting to get to a Yankees game that night, in the case of Juror 7. We’re not quite angry yet, but light irritation is bubbling up. Juror 8 asks for the murder weapon exhibit to be brought in. Much was made during trial about how unique of a knife it was, but what’s this?? Juror 8 went out and bought the same one last night! He suggests a secret ballot, and as tense music builds underneath, we notice that we’ve been devoid of it so far. The ballots roll in, largely in cursive because it’s not 2024 in this universe, and we have a second “not guilty’!
We don’t have to wonder who flipped for long: Juror 9, who looks like the repairman from Toy Story 2, was more moved by Juror 8’s bravery to stand up to the group than anything else, and he wants to hear more! Juror 12, who is a classic 50s adman (and lets us all know it), makes it all about him1, but is willing to run some stuff up the flagpole and see who salutes it2. After a brief bathroom break in a restroom that’s somehow bigger than the deliberation room, the group discusses the voracity of the old man’s claims. The passing of the train should have been too loud for him to hear what he said he did. Not that he was lying per se, but perhaps some facts were jumbled unintentionally. Juror 9 is sympathetic to this theoretical plight, because as you get older “it’s a very sad thing to mean nothing.” Two more votes for “not guilty.” Further discussion into the layout of the old man’s apartment and how quickly the disabled man would have had to leap from bed and rush down the hall to witness the kid fleeing the scene, plants more doubt. We’ve got a tied vote here, folks!
Ellen: If only Juror 9 had lived to see The Golden Bachelor, which fixed ageism!
As if the room isn’t hot enough already, everyone in there is smoking up a storm. With the room now evenly divided, attention turns to the defendant’s alibi. He claims to have been at the movies and returned around 3 AM, where he found his father’s body. Juror 4 is caught up in the fact that he can’t remember what movies he saw or who played in them, but Juror 8 tests 4’s own memory to make a point about our brains’ fallibility, especially under stress! They return to discussing the knife, and how it was stabbed down into the victim, but Juror 5 asks “anybody here ever seen a knife fight?” He explains that this kid knows how to use a switchblade, and you’d stab up with it, if anything. Juror 3 is so agitated and incensed we think for a moment he might stab Juror 8, but they calm down long enough for another vote. We’re left with only three “guilty” votes, in part because Juror 7 just wants to leave.
Ellen: We here at ILTBTA are appalled that anyone could forget a movie they saw, ever.
Juror 10 takes this opportunity to ask the room if they understand how “these people” are, how they lie, how they drink, and it’s just born in them, don’t you all know?? The other jurors one by one stand up and face away from him, and Juror 10 is forbidden to speak for the remainder of deliberation. The eyewitness testimony of the woman across the street is the peg upon which the guilty votes still hang. Based on some light sexism regarding her vanity and desire to appear younger in court, the men surmise that she usually wears glasses, and having just woken up from sleep when she witnessed the crime, likely wasn’t wearing them. She saw someone stab the victim, but wouldn’t it be reasonable to doubt it was definitely the defendant?
Tyler: At this point I’m totally convinced of the kid’s innocence and am starting to wonder if I killed his dad.
Juror 3 is now the sole dissenter. He vehemently and desperately tries to convince the others, who remain silent. This is a man who doesn’t know what to do with silence that isn’t capitulation, and he eventually sputters out. Turns out, he has a deeply strained relationship with his son and they haven’t spoken in years - the flip side of daddy issues! He changes his vote.
The defendant is acquitted off-screen, and Jurors 8 and 9 stop to learn each other’s real names on the courthouse steps before parting.
Tyler: One year later, the teen releases “If I Did It.”
Intermission
Even though ILTBTA is free, please indulge us further and enjoy this quick “advertisement.”
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Wiki-Wiki-Whaaat?
Love a good Wikipedia rabbit hole in search of some fun facts? Us too.
12 Angry Men’s Wikipedia page has some interesting facts and anecdotes that we recommend you read through, but here are a few of our favorites:
12 Angry Men is based on the 1954 teleplay of a similar-but-non-numerically-inclined named “Twelve Angry Men” written by Reginald Rose. It was written for the anthology TV show Studio One after Rose’s experience as a jury member for a manslaughter case, in which he and his fellow jury members ended up arguing about the case for eight hours.
Rose also adapted the teleplay into a … regular play, which debuted on stage in San Francisco in 1955 and made its Broadway debut fifty years later in 2004, where it ran for 328 performances.
Rose and star Henry Fonda (whom we first met in Mister Roberts) recruited Sidney Lumet, who had previously directed plays and TV dramas, to direct 12 Angry Men, his first feature film. While he would go on to direct many other movies, half of all movies he eventually directed originated in the theatre.
When shooting the beginning of the movie, Lumet positioned cameras above eye level with wide-angle lenses to create greater depth between the characters. As the movie progresses, the cameras are put at lower angles and nearly everyone is shown in closeups, so that the sense of claustrophobia within the jury room was more palpable.
Ellen: This is the kind of thing that I’m sure I felt subconsciously, but didn’t totally notice in the moment.
More contemporary legal analyses have focused on the amount of circumstantial evidence available and speculation on the part of the jury members. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted that several events in the movie (e.g., Juror 8 bringing the knife, “doing his own research”, and wide-ranging assumptions beyond the scope of reasonable doubt) would probably have yielded a mistrial if the jury deliberations were allowed to be revealed.
Ellen: Having somehow never been called for jury duty, let alone serving on one, I wonder how you’re supposed to know what exactly the scope of “reasonable doubt” is?
Regardless, the film has also been described as law professors as “a tribute to a common man holding out against (the) lynch mob mentality,” particularly important during the McCarthy era. Business academic Phil Rosenzweig said that the fact that the jury was entirely white men was actually quite important, writing:
“Many of the twelve would have looked around the room, and, seeing other white men, assumed that they had much in common and should be able to reach a verdict without difficulty. As they deliberate, however, fault lines begin to appear—by age, by education, by national origin, by socioeconomic level, by values, and by temperament.”
Due to its unique bottle episode format and critical acclaim, 12 Angry Men inspired several adaptations in both film and television. A 1997 made-for-TV movie starring Jack Lemmon (as Juror 8), Courtney B. Vance, James Gandolfini, Tony Danza, and Edward James Olmos (amongst others) was directed by William Friedkin (whom we met way back in 2021 when we wrote about The Exorcist) and received several awards and nominations.
After Ving Rhames defeated Lemmon for the Best Actor in a Miniseries or Television Film at that year’s Golden Globes, he invited Lemmon onto the stage and gave the award to him, feeling that he was more deserving. Since Rhames refused to take the award back, Lemmon kept the trophy.
Oscar NomNomNomz
Since we all know a movie is nothing without the food and drink it incorporates.
It’s now time to award the Oscar for Best Snacktor in a Supporting Role3. And the nomnomnominees are:
An apple while you deliberate
A cough drop from Juror #2
A paper cup of water from the water cooler
And the Oscar goes to … the paper cup of water from the water cooler! Unfortunately, Tyler drank it in an effort to stay hydrated (“It's extra important in the winter! Hydrate or die-drate!”), so Ellen will accept this award on its behalf.
Fill In The Blank
How did we really feel about The Academy nominating this?
Ellen: I’d like to open the window for the Academy so they can cool down and relax! This movie is really a testament to doing a lot with a little. Fundamentally, it’s twelve dudes in a room talking, but the performances, the circumstances, and the filmmaking transform a seemingly boring premise into something absolutely gripping. I was still rapt even though the outcome wasn’t exactly a surprise. At a cool 96 minutes, there’s nothing I would cut. As mentioned in Wiki-Wiki-Whaaat?, I also appreciated how quickly the seeming homogeneity of the jurors broke down quickly, exposing the inherent fallacy of a blanket “us vs them” mentality. There were a few caricatures of bad behavior, but the overall breadth of personalities and perspectives really worked.
Tyler: I’d like to walk up to The Academy and tell them my name in a sign of respect. I really enjoyed this! The plot was obviously going this way, but I loved seeing the dominos fall one by one and Juror 8 slowly but surely start sowing doubt in each of the holdouts (and essentially do the defense lawyer’s job). The script is also pretty tight, resulting in a bottle-episode of a movie that’s the perfect length with little to no fat left to be trimmed: even as what feels like an open-and-shut case gets dragged on by their arguments, it never feels like the movie itself is dragging. And, as we learned in Wiki-Wiki-Whaaat?, the camerawork subtly yet deftly brings you into the deliberation room, without making you feel too into the movie that you want to take a shower afterwards (looking at you Taxi Driver).
Let The Credits Roll
Thanks for reading! Some quick housekeeping as you exit the theatre:
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Post-Credits Scene
Get a sneak peek at the next ILTBTA installment.
Up next for ILTBTA in 2024 is the romantic war drama Atonement. Directed by literary adaptation extraordinaire Joe Wright (who also directed Pride & Prejudice, Anna Karenina, and Cyrano), Atonement stars James McAvoy and Keira Knightley as two lovers whose lives are changed forever after one of them is falsely accused of a crime. It is available to rent on YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, and Apple TV.
Until then, wanna Fonda, don’t you wanna? Wanna Fonda (don’t you wanna)?
Sounds like my ex-wife!
The inclusion of this phrase means it’s much older than I thought.
Results tabulated and certified by the accountants at Ernst & Yum™.