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

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 40^th 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.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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