With Clint Eastwood, in his mid-nineties, a stalwart of Hollywood. An iconic actor who’s transitioned into one of the greatest directors in cinema history. This might be his last film, but we might be jumping the gun on that because this film, Juror #2, stars Nicholas Hoult in this courtroom thriller as Justin Kemp shows Eastwood still cooking. He’s a young man with an expecting partner and seems to have a very boring suburban life in Georgia. He gets summoned for jury duty one day and is picked to be on the jury, much to his dismay. Once the trial starts, which is a murder trial of a young woman, Kendall Carter (Francesca Eastwood), with her boyfriend, James Michael Sythe (Gabriel Basso), is the person on trial for it. Justin learns through the evidence that he is connected to the case on a very personal level. When the film finishes, it has explicit invocations of the classic 1957 film 12 Angry Men by Sidney Lumet mixed with what I feel is The Usual Suspects. Here, we have a film where one juror gives his all to sway the other jurors and not to convict a man, but what are his intentions in doing so?
Most of this film is held on Hoult’s shoulders as he gives this tortured, guilt-ridden performance throughout the film. This sad man plays well off of the strong cast. J. K. Simmons, Leslie Bibb, Cedric Yarbrough, & Adrienne C. Moore play the other jurors he interacts with and debates the most. Simmons’ role in any other movie would be the whole film, but here, he’s quite important, but he is out of the tale swiftly. Things like this leave you a bit off guard about what you expect to happen, but there are some good turns that happen to draw you in more. Toni Collette plays Faith Killebrew, the prosecutor who is essentially the other lead of this film. She plays the character as you would expect a prosecutor. The character is also running for office, but there’s a point where she starts to question things, and the film gets into its procedural bag, which is just another thing that drags you into this tale. Chris Messina plays the public defender Eric Resnick, who is one of the few truly morally good characters in this story.
Zoey Deutch doesn’t get much to do as Justin’s partner Ally, along with Kiefer Sutherland as Larry Lasker, who is there to help Justin. They’re pure support and don’t have a lot to them. The Ally character, I feel, is easy to hate, which sucks for what’s supposed to be a lovely, pregnant wife, but maybe that’s part of the point of the story. It’s good to see Yarbrough get to be good and dramatic and he’s a nice foil for Justin in most of their scenes. Juror #2 feels like a pretty standard film that might end up primarily for older people, but I do think it does well to take a good look at the ethics and morality of humans and this justice system that is built up by them. Is Justice… Justice, or are people just trying to go home no matter what happens to people? I don’t know, but it’s a good film.
Score: B+
