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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Published 29 Oct 2024
Excited to see what Eastwood does with a courtroom thriller.
Take the zany plot with a pinch of salt and philosophical riches will be your reward.
Low key one of the best films of 2024.
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