Oprah Movie Club Pick for October: 12 Angry Men

1957 jury drama

Rating: 20/20

Plot: 12 jurors try to decide whether a young man should get the death penalty for killing his father. It seems like an easy decision until one guy fucks it up and causes another guy to miss his baseball game.

This movie explodes like 12 sticks of dynamite!

See, here's the good thing about having a blog that nobody reads. This is the Oprah Movie Club Pick for October which, if you look at a calendar, you'll notice was actually a couple months ago. But I really only have to worry about 1 angry man.

I've seen this a few times, and it doesn't lose its power or relevance or anything else a movie could have and lose with subsequent viewings. It's a movie where we're put in a searing room with the titular jurymen, and you have to get to know them even if you don't really wanna. And you sweat right along with them, and you question your own soul and your biases and your nature and your duties as a human being, and that's what makes the movie one of the greats. It's one of the best courtroom drama movies if not the greatest courtroom drama movie, and it tells the story without even showing a single second of the trial itself. Instead, it's the jurors' discussion that paints the trial for us--they give us sketches and gradually fill in gaps until it all takes a shape that is probably far too recognizable for the average American citizen.

Check out that opening shot--looking up at impossibly high pillars in a courthouse. It's weighty and gigantic, like the civil obligation these 12 guys are supposed to be taking seriously. And then there's a mini-extended shot through the halls of the courthouse to the door of the courtroom itself, a shot of the fidgeting jury members we're about to learn about and a bored judge. They're sent away, and there's a great shot over the defendant's shoulder as they retire. A shot of a very worried defendant's face--and he looks so young--that fades away into a shot of the empty jury room. And again--that weight! And that's it until a few minutes at the end. The rest is either in the deliberation room or--in one small scene--in the restroom. Add this to the small list of great movies--Rope, My Dinner with Andre, Rear Window, Reservoir Dogs, The Exterminating Angel, Alien--where all the action is confined to one setting.

And you're just stuck in there with them and those words. And that heat. What's the heat represent, by the way? Is it just a way to make the characters a little more uncomfortable or is there symbolism there? The characters to get gradually sweatier which gives this a real-timey feel. Or is the promise that "this is going to be the hottest day of the year" some kind of foreshadowing? Anyway--those words. You have to love the dialogue in this. There's all this hidden tension, and you really find out what these characters are all about with just a few simple words, all their hidden bigotries and prejudices and the pasts that shade their thinking. And you get all these great individual lines: "He can't hear you. He never will." "He don't even speak good English." (The English teacher part of me has to appreciate that one.) "I made 27 grand last year selling marmalade." (Ok, there's no reason to like that one.) The 12 actors manage to be realistic while just stagy enough to keep this all interesting, so that you feel like you could be watching an actual jury deliberate but know you're really not. Piglet's in there, mousey John Fielder who thinks everything is "interesting." There's marmalade-salesman and baseball enthusiast Jack Warden who tosses litter through an opened window because that's the type of guy he is. Add a match trick, a hat flip, and a great whistle, along with the fact that he doesn't seem to give a fuck except when his machismo convinces him that he does have to give a fuck, and you've got a character who stands out in that room. Juror number 9 might be my favorite though--Joseph Sweeney who slows everything up initially because he has to drop a deuce. Then, the first few times he talks, it's with a close-up of his face looking directly into the camera. I also like the part where he's bopped in the head with a wad of paper and says, "That was a damn stupid thing to do!" Ed Begley's great as one of the more disagreeable jurors, and Lee J. Cobb--a guy you know has got himself a well-watered lawn--gets a climactic monologue where he shows off some rather impressive pointing abilities, a monologue that cements him as a completely despicable villain before he withers and breaks your heart. Fonda's great, too, grace under pressure, and I like that he never tries to do too much with the performance. Another thing I like about the acting--there's not much wasted movements in that room. Even the moments selected for the characters to hang up their coats, laugh, slouch, and put their spectacles back on all seem carefully chosen.

Other great things about this film:

That shot of the switchblade lodged in the table (pretty sure you're not supposed to do that to government property, by the way) and then that knife just popping up in all those shots after that. Scenes sans music until that point when Fonda rolls the dice with the secret ballot vote. And what's the significance of those votes being tossed inside that guy's glasses? Cobb's bit "whoops" moment about the old man and that look on his face and the stunned silence that seems so much longer than the 1.5 seconds it actually is. Cobb's "What are you looking at?" during one of the peaks of this deliberation. And following the bitch slappin' "You don't really want to kill me do you," how that room darkens suddenly, like the sun's gone behind a cloud or something. Just awesome. The almost touching little name exchange at the end. No, I never got my sequel where Fonda and the old man take their relationship to the next logical step and have a sexual relationship, but I'm ok with that.

Man, what a movie! They just can't make 'em like this anymore.

So many lines just cut here, stabbing at the idea of innocent until proven guilty, our ideas, our collective souls, our faux ethics. There's cynicism in the script because this is a realistic and unapologetic look at men, but there's so much hope, too. Just think about what each of those characters have learned about themselves as they grab their time together ends. It's written all over their faces as they walk out of that room. When they entered, 11 of the 12 angry men were prepared to send a man to his death, wiping out any potential he has with one single half-assed decision. When they end up making the right decision, it shows just how much potential human beings actually have. And that's what makes it such a happy ending.

God, I hope that one of the movies the kid saw was Indestructible Man featuring Lon Chaney Jr.