Juror #2 movie review (2024) | Little White Lies

Juror #2 review – one of Clint Eastwood’s finest late-era films

29 Oct 2024 / Released: 01 Nov 2024

Words by David Jenkins

Directed by Clint Eastwood

Starring JK Simmons, Nicholas Hoult, and Zoey Deutch

Group of people sitting in courtroom, various ages and ethnicities, some using electronic devices.
Group of people sitting in courtroom, various ages and ethnicities, some using electronic devices.
4

Anticipation.

Excited to see what Eastwood does with a courtroom thriller.

4

Enjoyment.

Take the zany plot with a pinch of salt and philosophical riches will be your reward.

4

In Retrospect.

Low key one of the best films of 2024.

Clint Eastwood’s 40th film offers a moral­ly com­plex riff on the tried-and-test­ed court­room dra­ma which cul­mi­nates in a killer final shot.

The vast, com­plex spec­trum of the Human Com­e­dy, its atten­dant emo­tions, phys­i­o­log­i­cal stick­ing points and eth­i­cal grey areas, can nev­er be ful­ly under­stood, much less leg­is­lat­ed for by Big Gov­ern­ment or under­fund­ed state insti­tu­tions. So says Clint East­wood who, with his 40th pic­ture as direc­tor, proves once more that he remains one of a small coterie of Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tive artists whose work hand­i­ly tran­scends the cre­ative dol­drums of the alien­at­ing polemic or the hec­tor­ing advo­ca­cy yarn to couch its chal­leng­ing philo­soph­i­cal ideas with­in the knot­ty tan­gle of every­day lives. 

Were this to be the inde­fati­ga­ble Eastwood’s cin­e­mat­ic swan­song – he’ll be spark­ing up 95 can­dles come next May – it would be a very fine and mem­o­rable one, a work which wran­gles with enough pet themes to keep arm­chair Clint schol­ars purring while also serv­ing up a goofy and con­trived court­room dra­ma that keeps you guess­ing right up until a supreme­ly haunt­ing final shot which sig­nals the cold, inex­orable march of mod­ern justice.

It sits at a per­fect mid-point between a spry satire of America’s creak­ing legal sys­tem and an old man yells at cloud” laun­dry list of civic griev­ances which plays like a right wing tabloid op-ed writ­ten in light. Even the char­ac­ter names are loaded and hilar­i­ous: Toni Col­lette plays a Bour­bon-swill­ing pros­e­cu­tor with the DA’s seat in her sights named Faith Kille­brew (pro­nounced Kill-brew”); mean­while, the neck-tat­ted defen­dant in the case at the film’s cen­tre, played by Gabriel Bas­so, is giv­en the unfor­tu­nate­ly por­ten­tous name of James Sythe.

Our hero, mean­while, is named to rep­re­sent the car­go pant/​polo shirt-wear­ing anony­mous every­man: Justin Kemp. He is per­fect­ly essayed by a per­ma-per­spir­ing Nicholas Hoult in a way that recalls one of Alfred Hitchcock’s jit­tery wrong men” (Mon­tomery Clift in I Con­fess! or Hen­ry Fon­da in The Wrong Man come to mind). And the mad set-up is some­thing that only Hitch could’ve amply pulled off, with Kemp assigned jury duty in his home state of Geor­gia as his heav­i­ly preg­nant wife is about to give birth, only to quick­ly realise that he is actu­al­ly (acci­den­tal­ly) guilty for the extreme­ly seri­ous crimes being lev­elled at the defendant.

If he choos­es to fess up, then his own pet­ty infrac­tions will come back to haunt him and he’ll like­ly to do some seri­ous time and miss out on the chance to bring up his child. Sim­i­lar­ly, if Kille­brew doesn’t lock down a con­vic­tion, then she can wave ta-ta to that pro­mo­tion. He knows that the only way to come out of the oth­er side of this unscathed is to go full 12 Angry Men on his fel­low jurors and slow­ly, method­i­cal­ly, win over hearts and minds and make sure that Sythe is found inno­cent while keep­ing his own pow­der dry.

Visu­al­ly, the film is com­mend­ably unfussy and prac­ti­cal, immers­ing the view­er inside the case as it flits back and forth between cour­t­house and crime scene, empha­sis­ing the locked-in/­closed-off thought pat­terns that come with being a juror. Images of Blind Lady Jus­tice wield­ing her scales fea­ture promi­nent­ly in a film which sets out to prove how utter­ly redun­dant they are when those work­ing under their vast shad­ow refuse to ful­ly embrace her sto­ic sym­bol­ism. It’s not so much a study of cor­rup­tion as it is lethar­gy and the dif­fi­cul­ty of feel­ing com­pas­sion towards some­one who just looks like he makes mischief.

In this as in all cas­es, bad things have hap­pened and some­one has to pay. But East­wood and debu­tant screen­writer Jonathan Abrams refuse to accept such bina­ry delin­eations when it comes to their char­ac­ters and the future they deserve, espe­cial­ly when no-one in the film is squeaky clean in the moral­i­ty stakes, save for Justin’s angel­ic wife Ally (Zoey Deutch). One juror refus­es to be con­vinced of Sythe’s pos­si­ble inno­cence, not down to bald igno­rance, but because of the com­plete­ly valid trau­ma he has suf­fered that has been re-trig­gered by the case. Every­one has their demons, their back­sto­ry, their reasons.

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