If you think jury duty’s a drag, consider how much worse sitting in judgment of others could be if, on the first day of the trial, you were to discover the defendant’s been accused of a terrible crime for which you were in fact the one responsible. That’s the hook of Clint Eastwood’s latest — and some fear last — feature, “Juror No. 2,” a slightly preposterous but thoroughly engaging extension of the 94-year-old filmmaker’s career-long fascination with guilt, justice and the limitations of the law.
In movies where Eastwood acts, guns go a long way to resolve problems the system can’t. But the director does not appear in “Juror No. 2,” a moral-minded courtroom drama in which Nicholas Hoult plays the lone holdout in a murder trial. The film may open on a note of idealism, but it quickly turns cynical as Hoult’s character, “perfect” husband and upstanding citizen Justin Kemp, who honors his jury summons, even though he’d rather be home with his pregnant wife Ally (Zoey Deutch).
Justin asks to be excused, but is selected anyway, rounding out a dozen folks who’d rather be doing anything other than their civic duty. The whole process is “wasting our time,” and “my kids need me,” complain Justin’s fellow jurors, whereas he has an entirely different set of reasons for wanting to reach the right verdict.
As soon as prosecuting attorney Faith Killebrew (Toni Collette) describes the murder — a clear-cut case of domestic violence in her opinion— Justin realizes that he was there at the roadside bar on the night in question. More troubling still, he starts to wonder whether the deer he hit on the way home might not have been a deer at all, but the victim, Kendall Carter (Francesca Eastwood).
What are the odds? Best not to wonder. You’re either on board with the premise or you’re not in a film that takes the resulting predicament seriously, inviting audiences to ponder what they’d do in Justin’s shoes. To complicate matters, the expectant father is a recovering alcoholic, and his sponsor (Kiefer Sutherland) — who also happens to be a lawyer — advises him that if he were to come forward, no one would believe he’d been sober on the night in question.
It’s no coincidence the film is set in Georgia, where first-degree vehicular homicide is treated as a felony. The location gives Collette (and no one else in the cast) a chance to do a thick Southern accent, as her character alternates between court and the campaign trail. Faith is running for district attorney on a tough-on-domestic-abuse platform, and this case could push her to victory, which makes the truth as inconvenient for her as it is for Justin. (On the opposite side, Chris Messina plays the desperate-sounding public defender.)
Once the trial wraps and deliberations begin, Eastwood seems to be counting on our having seen “12 Angry Men,” dangling the possibility that Justin could sway the rest of the jury to acquit — or else nudge them toward a guilty verdict, letting Kendall’s boyfriend, James Sythe (Gabriel Basso), take the fall. But Jonathan Abrams’ script has a few twists up its sleeve, which seem to fit Eastwood’s more skeptical view of the legal process.
Early on, Justin gives a short Frank Capra-worthy speech about how the defendant deserves the benefit of the doubt, but it’s clear that’s Justin’s conscience talking. Ten of the jurors are ready to convict, while Justin finds an ally in Harold (J.K. Simmons), a former police detective whose gut tells him the accused is innocent.
The trouble with swaying the others, Justin realizes, is that they’re operating on prejudices — which amounts to a pretty damning critique of the “peer” system by which juries operate. Like both the police and the prosecutor, these fictional civilians are susceptible to bias, considering only the evidence that supports their hastily reached conclusions. Of course, everything could be resolved quite quickly if Justin came clean.
Here, I was reminded of a little-seen but utterly remarkable silent film from director John M. Stahl called “The Woman Under Oath,” which challenges the sexist notion that women might be too emotional or irrational to serve on juries (the progressive drama was released in 1919, nearly two decades before New York granted the responsibility to women). In the film, 11 men are ready to convict, while the state’s first female juror insists the defendant is innocent — and she should know! In the end, she reveals that she was the killer, justifying her actions to the jury, who exonerate the suspect while keeping her secret.
That film bears mentioning for two reasons: First, “The Woman Under Oath” deserves to be rediscovered, and second, there’s nothing like putting the culprit on the jury to upend the process. In another filmmaker’s hands, the situation might play as melodrama, but Eastwood’s earnest, unfussy style makes it feel less far-fetched, centering our attention on Justin’s dilemma.
Editor Joel Cox and his son David keep cutting back to close-ups of Justin’s face, as Hoult telegraphs his turmoil through shifty eyes and nervous glances — emotions he’d surely keep hidden in real life. He’s not the only character facing a crisis of conscience here either: Faith eventually starts to question her case, which could jeopardize her political ambitions, while giving Collette a chance to redeem a character who earlier read as a self-righteous obstacle to justice and now seems like its most Eastwood-worthy champion.
After roughly an hour of tell-tale dialogue designed to trigger Justin’s guilt, Abrams’ script plays a trick toward the end, skipping over the jury’s final vote so as to surprise us when the verdict is read in court — an effective cheat, dramatically speaking, which leaves Justin’s most important decision off-screen. While there’s much to chew on throughout, the film’s ambiguous last few scenes trust us to be the judge.
As always, Eastwood respects our intelligence. And yet, “Juror No. 2” registers as something of an anomaly in his oeuvre: It ranks among his quietest films, forgoing spectacle in favor of self-reflection. One could argue the whole system is on trial, and yet, the only angry man here is Eastwood, not the jurors, as Dirty Harry goes out not with a bang, but an ambivalent whisper.
From Variety US