12 Angry Men (1957)

Directed by Sidney Lumet. Starring Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, Jack Warden, Ed Begley, Joseph Sweeney, Martin Balsam, E.G. Marshall, Robert Webber, John Fiedler, Jack Klugman, George Voskovec, Edward Binns.

Sidney Lumet’s towering feature film debut is rightly regarded as a classic of American cinema, using twelve unnamed jurors deliberating over a capital murder case to explore human nature through a social prism. Eleven of the twelve are convinced of the defendant’s guilt, while the lone holdout (Fonda) feels that there is reasonable doubt, and he probes all of the evidence and testimony amid a slow but certain shift in the consensus. Loaded with persuasive performances from a character actor-heavy cast, the production also employs several simple filmmaking devices for maximum impact (e.g., gradually lowering the angle of the camera and increasing close-ups to suggest claustrophobia). Compelling and completely engrossing from start to finish, the script is disinterested in solving the crime or stating clearly whether or not the defendant killed his father; it’s focused on the personalities of the men tasked with rendering a life-or-death verdict, the importance of the Constitution’s assertion of innocence before validation of guilt, where the burden of proof lies, and the tendency for people to project their own anxieties and fears on symbols, straw men, whipping boys, representative social groups, and so on. With modern social media’s staggering effect on the so-called “court of popular opinion,” the questions and concerns raised by this film are just as relevant today as ever before, if not more so.

97/100