As the pandemic continues unabated, I continue my weekly recommendation of a movie set in New York.
Tonight's offering: 12 Angry Men (1957)
A jury struggles to reach a verdict in a capital murder trial. The movie tries to be a character study, and to some extent succeeds -- at least when it comes to some of the characters. Others are not quite as filled out. It's quite amazing what can be accomplished, dramatically in a film that is, essentially set in one small room.
I am of a mixed mind regarding the ultimate verdict. It's supposed to be the ultimate victory for fairness, but in reality it doesn't quite get there. The key is in all these bits of seemingly ironclad evidence that initially add up to an obvious guilty verdict. The jurors -- initially Henry Fonda as juror #8, but others join in -- pick apart the evidence piece by piece, raising doubts, until everyone agrees on a not guilty verdict. But even if each piece of evidence leaves room for small but reasonable doubt, the totality of the evidence can still be convincing.
That shortcoming notwithstanding, 12AM has a special place in my heart because my seventh (or was it eighth?) grade class was going to perform it. I was cast as juror #3 (the Lee J. Cobb character), who I always thought was the most interesting. Sadly, our production was cancelled -- I forget why. There's also the fact that I watched a lot of television during the 1970s, and so saw a lot of homages to this movie.
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