This past Saturday I saw the film 12 Angry Men, for the Flora Rose House movie night. The film has a somewhat legendary status, being mentioned on countless greatest movie lists of all time. The movie follows a very simple premise, it is just twelve men in the deliberation room discussing the murder case they have been given. Juror number eight is the main character and opens the case up to serious discussion as everyone was ready to vote guilty on a whim except for him. The movie ends with juror number eight being able to convince everyone that there is reasonable doubt in the prosecution’s case, and led the jury to vote not guilty. The movie was quite entertaining, which was surprising to me as I normally don’t like older movies such as this one. The movie does have some inconsistencies though.

Normally I would not be so inclined to notice and criticize certain dialog of a movie, but in a film that holds itself in such a morally upright position I believe it must be picked at. One of the main messages of the film is that profiling people is never good practice. This message is consistent in the film, but only when it fits juror number eight’s narrative. His entire argument is based upon that fact that the defendant is being profiled, and may not be the killer and is being prosecuted simply because it is the easy thing to do. Juror eight and others in the not guilty camp also employ this idea when attacking juror number two, who is biased against the defendant because of how his son has treated him in the past. These points are consistent with the message except they seem to lose this moral high ground when picking the witnesses’ lives apart. The most glaring issue is when juror number nine “picks apart” the witness who was an old man. He seems to know exactly who this old man is based on his appearance and how he walks, which is even more petty when compared to the things that were attacked above. They throw out this entire witness’s testimony based on this, believing he only said what he said to feel important for once in his life.

They also speculate as to why the defense lawyer didn’t perform a more rigorous cross examination of the witnesses, and just assumed he did want to be there and was not fully invested in the case. Maybe the defense lawyer knew the options were limited knowing his client did in fact kill his father. This led to the side of juror number eight bringing so much speculation into the deliberation when looking at the witness and defendant testimonials as a way of giving the kid a “fair” trial, feeling as if he had to do the defendant’s lawyer’s job. The message is only consistent when it fits juror number eight’s narrative, and with this being such a morally upright movie, left me disappointed and weakened the film’s message.