Juror #2 (2024 | USA | 114 minutes | Clint Eastwood)
The premise for Clint Eastwood’s latest is admittedly delicious: what if a juror in a murder trial might be the real killer? Over a couple of hours of twists and juicy turns, the venerable director either takes a series of lazy storytelling turns for the sake of maximizing the drama or uses these turns to interrogate a lazy criminal justice system that takes the easy way out rather than confronting hard truths. Why not both?
The juror in question is Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult), an adoring husband who treaded dutifully treaded to the courtroom to fulfil his civic duty. A features writer for a local lifestyle magazine who’s still working from the office in the year 2022, he’s desperately hoping that he won’t get picked, but no luck. In Georgia, the no-nonsense judge doesn’t see any reason why having a wife at home with a high risk pregnancy who’s expected to give birth in a matter of days as an excuse to get out of adjudicating a domestic violence murder trial since she’ll be keeping business hours.
It’s here that we must come to accept that the 94-year-old director is perhaps not intimately familiar (or concerned) with the intricacies of the legal system or the pace of courtroom trials. I, for instance, was able to delay a jury summons for up to three years without with a few clicks through the King County website. Alas, no such luck in Georgia for this expectant father. In this universe, the prosecutor (Toni Collette) needs to get a conviction to secure win in her bid to become District Attorney in the election that’s only a week away. Justice marches on, blindly.
The supposedly open-and-shut case is one of a man charged with assaulting and killing his wife. He’s a known “bad guy”, they had a fight in a bar that continued into the parking lot in the pouring rain, and then she ended up dead in a gutter. With no other suspects or apparent investigation by the police (it’s filmed in Savanah, which I guess hovers in the small-town vibe for an actual city), the seemingly lazy theory of the crime has gone largely unchallenged. That is, by everyone but the creep’s public defender played ably by Chris Messina. He and Collette have a nice rapport, signaling an everyone-knows-everyone feeling for the town with lawyers who went to the same schools and drink in the same bars.
Once the jury’s assembled, flashbacks from Justin’s character reveal a difficult history of alcoholism, painful experiences with lost pregnancies, and an intimate involvement with the case he’s trying. One could be offended by his participation in the case at all, but basically every mid-tier bold faced name (J.K. Simmons, Cedric Yarbrough, Leslie Bibb, Adrienne C. Moore, among others) in the jury box has no compunction in bending their oaths. He’s also has a lawyer/sponsor played by Kiefer Sutherland willing to dish out highly questionable ethics advice for the one dollar price of the attorney-client privilege. Their deliberations are highly preposterous, mildly offensive, and yet a great deal of fun. All the while, Hoult sweatily conveys Justin’s highly muddled motivations and frank ineptitude as a schemer as being grounded in familial obligations, possible guilt, and a desire to do the right thing.
In another life, this might’ve been a tedious mini-series in which each episode reveals a juror’s backstory, from true crime podcast enjoyers, amateur sketch artists, retired cops turned florists, or an addiction to serving on juries. But, thankfully, Clint doesn’t have time for that nonsense. He steer through it all with just the right about of time to convey the frustration of being stuck in a room with a bunch of strangers to decide someone fate without wearing out his welcome. Plot bombs drop with regular efficiency and the thing barrels along to a provocative conclusion. The man’s in his nineties; it would be a shame if this was his final film, but he presses forward with efficiency. One could with for a little more mystery about what actually happened, but that really doesn’t seem to be Eastwood’s primary interest. The speed and seeming simplicity of the story, again, this leads to some question as to whether there’s an underlying commentary or just a fire burning to entertain, cut corners be damned. Either way, it’s kind of a hoot.
WB is treating Clint Eastwood’s fortieth film for them like a sequel to Rural Juror, giving the thriller a cursory week in fifty theaters before dumping it in Max’s content bin for streaming. On principle, for lovers of cinema and the theatrical experience this stunningly outrageous disrespect. Although much of it plays like a star-studded prestige episode of your favorite legal procedural, there’s still quite a bit of fun at being in a room and yelling at the screen with strangers at each outrageous plot development.