Eastwood’s Juror #2 Guilty of Being a Crowd-Pleasing Gem
Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult) wants to get out of jury duty. His wife Allison (Zoey Deutch) is sitting at home approaching the ninth month of a high-risk pregnancy, so it’s understandable he feels he should be there for her. But the judge (Amy Aquino) isn’t having it. She promises he’ll be home at a reasonable hour each day and will, of course, be immediately excused if Allison were to go into labor. Assistant District Attorney Faith Killebrew (Toni Collette) and determined public defender Eric Resnick (Chris Messina) like Justin, too. They’re certain he’ll treat the defendant, accused murderer James Michael Sythe (Gabriel Basso), with open-minded fairness. Any jury would be lucky to have him.
That’s the introduction to director Clint Eastwood’s latest, and potentially last, motion picture Juror #2 and, as standard legal thriller setups go, there’s nothing at first glance that inventive about what screenwriter Jonathan A. Abrams has come up with. The twist? Before opening arguments even conclude, Justin is practically convinced Sythe is innocent. Worse, he’s equally as positive he was the one who was accidentally responsible for the tragic victim in this case Kendall Carter’s (Francesca Eastwood) death.
But it’s been almost 12 months since Justin, a recovering alcoholic going on four years of sobriety, assumed he struck a deer in a blinding rainstorm, so the chances law enforcement won’t hold him criminally responsible for a fatal hit and run are virtually zero. But Sythe didn’t do it, and even if he has a violent criminal background, does that mean he should spend his life behind bars?
It’s a Suspect meets 12 Angry Men scenario sprinkled with a dose of suitably scandalous crime reenactment television flair (think Dateline or vintage Court TV), and Eastwood, even at 94, is the type of confident, old-school Hollywood talent to make something like this effortlessly enthralling. While Abrams’s script is pure airport fiction complete with ripe implausibilities that are downright laughable and likely wouldn’t have passed muster in a random episode of the always goofy original run of Perry Mason, the director gives things a sense of emotionally authentic gravitas that sucked me in. He also gets superb character turns from his outstanding ensemble, Hoult, Messina, Deutch, and J.K. Simmons (as a fellow jury member who quickly surmises something is fishy with the prosecution’s case) in particular.
Best of all is Collette. Killebrew is in a heated campaign to become the new District Attorney, and she sees a conviction in this case as the key to victory. But as certain as the prosecutor is as the trial begins, as events near their conclusion she starts to wonder if law enforcement has ensnared the wrong man. Collette does an excellent job of showing how this moral conundrum weighs upon the woman’s conscience like an anvil. The veteran actor brings a flurry of emotional contradictions to vibrant, intoxicating life with mesmeric grace. It’s a phenomenal performance, right up there with Collette’s justifiably lauded turns in Muriel’s Wedding, The Sixth Sense, About a Boy, Little Miss Sunshine, and Hereditary.
Speaking of About a Boy, this is the first time Hoult and Collette have shared the screen since that 2002 miracle, and something magical happens whenever they’re in a scene together. Whether it’s a brief, seemingly unimportant conversation outside the courthouse before the trial has begun, an insignificant back-and-forth during jury selection, or a magnificently well-written exchange on a park bench late in the film’s climactic act, every moment with them facing off is worth paying fastidious attention to. It also helps make the film’s concluding image unexpectedly powerful.
As study as Abrams’s script proves to be (it overflows with hot-button social and political issues seamlessly woven into the otherwise purposefully sensationalistic premise), I do think it offers up a few endings too many before finally settling on the only one that makes any lasting, penetrating sense. Also, as previously stated, there are several loopy flights of fancy, many of which would likely have had this case declared a mistrial long before it ended up in the jury’s hands. When looked at with a clear head and unclouded eyes, the whole thing is admittedly a crumbling house of cards.
So what? Much like the aforementioned 1987 legal thriller Suspect, directed by Peter Yates and starring Cher and Dennis Quaid, I find it best to suspend disbelief and go along for the ride. This is Eastwood’s best film since Sully, maybe since Letters from Iwo Jima. If this does end up being the legend’s last trip behind the camera, my verdict is that Juror #2 is a bona fide crowd-pleaser that’s guilty of being hugely entertaining.
Film Rating: 3 (out of 4)
