JUROR #2 - Mark Reviews Movies

Juror #2, Warner Bros. Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 31, 2024

The premise of Juror #2 is inherently contrived, and that's what makes it such an ingenious one. The story is set over the course of a murder trial in small-town Georgia, where a woman's body was found at the bottom of a gulch beneath a road almost a year before the court proceedings begin. The suspicion and evidence point at the woman's boyfriend, a man with a criminal past, a history of bad behavior, and plenty of signs of a temperamental attitude. He must be guilty, but just as all of that information comes to light, Jonathan Abrams' screenplay throws its clever wrench into the works.

There is a likely suspect in the courtroom, but he's not sitting next to the defense attorney. No, he's in the juror box, recalling the night of the woman's death. It began at a roadhouse bar some miles from the creek where her body will be discovered the morning, and the future juror is sitting there, staring at a glass of booze and barely noticing the woman and her boyfriend getting into an argument. As the fight heads outside, that same man is in his car in the parking lot. After the woman starts walking down that dark road alone on a rainy night, our man starts driving, and on the bridge above where the dead woman will soon be found, he hits something—or someone.

The juror is Justin (Nicholas Hoult), a man who suddenly realizes that he likely killed this woman without knowing it. Yes, everything that has to happen to put this man in this particular position is very unlikely, and the fact that no one suspects or even thinks such a thing could be possible gives it, oddly, a sense of believability.

With all of this in place, Abrams and director Clint Eastwood, who has suggested this might be his final movie, toy with the character and our sympathies, while they also put forth a pragmatically skeptical view of the justice system. It only works if people are honest about what they have seen, have done, and want, as well as what they hold closest to their hearts. In theory, a trial should be about getting at the truth or as close to it as humanly possible, but what if almost everyone in the courtroom has an ulterior or questionable motive for being there in the first place? It's a recipe for utter failure.

It's also the setup for a nifty drama, as well as a smart thriller, which this movie is in many ways. It's about people with distinct desires and ideas clashing, and it's also, theoretically, about the wicked excitement of watching a potentially guilty man stew and squirm, as his belief that he's a good person despite what he might have done gradually pushes people into looking deeper into the case of the woman's death and, hence, his direct involvement in it.

In that key regard, though, something is off here. Maybe it's in Eastwood's impassive direction, which works quite well as the facts of the trial and the debates in the jury room unfold but doesn't quite communicate the internal torment of its protagonist. Perhaps it's in Hoult's performance, which becomes a series of evasive looks in close-ups that make his character seem more cold and calculating than morally tortured and desperate.

Justin is a fascinating character, with a past of his own that he wants to escape. He also holds a genuine belief that he is a changed man, deserving of the second chance life has given him—with a pretty and pregnant wife (played by Zoey Deutch) expecting the couple's first child after years of trying and tragedy.

It's little wonder he does what he does over the course of the story, even if it does start a chain of events that re-opens the case in the minds of people who want the truth about the woman's death. As strong as this plotting and these characteristics are, however, the character and his wracked soul remain at an unfortunate distance, which undermines the whole core of the story being told here.

Otherwise, the strength of the plot and the ideas it raises are consistent. It unfolds largely in court, as James (Gabriel Basso) is on trial for the death of his girlfriend (played by Francesca Eastwood in flashbacks). His lawyer is Eric (Chris Messina), a public defender whose case load and lack of help probably explain why his defense is so weak that the jurors (among that cast are J.K. Simmons, Leslie Bibb, and Cedric Yarbrough) have to ask some of the questions he fails to put forward to assorted witnesses.

For the prosecution is Faith (Toni Collette), who is certain she has a winning case at hand and, while she doesn't want to admit it, sure her win will guarantee a forthcoming victory in her election for district attorney. She has a personal investment, in other words, to push for a guilty verdict, even if she starts to wonder if the accused might be innocent.

Juror #2, then, becomes a solid courtroom drama that, sadly, doesn't quite succeed as the intimate, morally complex thriller it clearly wants to be. The filmmaking and lead performance are too detached for us to really feel this conundrum, a sense of sympathy for the main character, or much satisfaction in watching him tie his own noose.

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