Juror No. 2, an old-school adult thriller whose improbable twists don’t undermine its suspense, proves that even at the age of 94, Clint Eastwood remains a more skillful director than most of his compatriots.
For his 40th (!) behind-the-camera effort, the cinema legend delivers unique courtroom melodrama via the tale of a man who finds himself chosen to determine the fate of an alleged murderer, only to discover that he may have a personal connection to the crime. Unpredictable to the end, and helmed with the auteur’s usual no-frills proficiency, it’s another of Eastwood’s inquiries into the nature of justice, the limits of the legal system to attain it, and the possible need, in that case, to take matters into one’s own hands.
Juror No. 2, which will be released Nov. 1, is merely receiving a ceremonial 50-theater release from the filmmaker’s long-time studio Warner Bros—a puzzling state of affairs given its classic, mainstream Hollywood pleasures.
In Georgia, Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult) and his wife Ally (Zoey Deutch) are on the verge of welcoming their first child into the world. Justin surprises his wife with a newly decorated nursery by covering her eyes and leading her into the room, and later, Ally accidentally turns the lights off in the kitchen while Justin is still cleaning up. Though Eastwood doesn’t underline it, these early instances of sightlessness speak to the material’s interest in the relationship between what is seen and what is known, and they also subtly harmonize with the repeated image of blindfolded Lady Justice holding her trademark scales.
Justin is annoyed that he’s been summoned to jury duty at the precise moment his offspring is about to be born. Regrettably, try as he might, those circumstances don’t get him out of serving, and he’s chosen alongside eleven other citizens to participate in the trial of James Sythe (Gabriel Basso). According to prosecutor Faith Killebrew (Toni Collette), James murdered his girlfriend Kendall Carter (Francesca Eastwood) following a night at Rowdy’s bar that was marred by a fight and Kendall storming off in the rain, announcing to James (and onlookers) that she was done with him. Faith contends that James followed Kendall down the road, bludgeoned her to death, and threw her over the railing, where she was found the following day by a hiker.
Faith doesn’t just want a conviction; she needs it, since it’s the key to her winning an upcoming election for District Attorney. Her public-defender adversary (Chris Messina) is a friend with whom she shares regular drinks, and who’s wholly convinced that James is innocent, implying that Faith’s political fortunes are part of her motivation for seeking a conviction. Before the judge and jury, James takes the stand and pleads his innocence, offering a version of events that differ from eyewitnesses who spied him and Kendall sparring at the bar that evening, and an elderly man who claims that he witnessed an individual—whom he identifies as James—exit his vehicle and look over the railing at the exact spot where Kendall perished.
(Warning: Some spoilers ahead.)
All in all, Faith persuasively argues that James is guilty, and yet Juror No. 2 makes plain early on that he’s not. This is because, upon hearing the details of the homicide, Justin’s mind begins flashing back to that very night, when—upon driving home alone from Rowdy’s—he’d gotten distracted by his cell phone and accidentally hit something with his Toyota 4Runner. When he checked the scene, he saw nothing, and with a “Deer Xing” sign nearby, he figured he’d struck an animal. Now, however, he realizes that he was responsible for killing Kendall, which thus saddles him with a choice between saving his own hide and exonerating the wrongly accused James.
This is pretty close to an only-in-the-movies situation, and it transforms Juror No. 2 into a warped 12 Angry Men in which Justin—after consulting with a lawyer friend (Kiefer Sutherland) who tells him he’s facing upwards of 30 years behind bars if he confesses—tries to convince his fellow jurors that James didn’t kill Kendall, all while avoiding implicating himself. Striving to thread a legal and moral needle, Justin is initially at odds with his compatriots, all of whom are ready to throw the book at James.
Nonetheless, by muddying deliberations with reasonable doubt, he starts swaying a few of them, such as Harold (J.K. Simmons), a flower shop owner who, it turns out, is a retired police detective with a hunch that James isn’t the lethal type—and that, as another juror theorizes, Kendall could have been slain by a hit-and-run driver.
Jonathan Abrams’ script is sharp and efficient enough to almost make Justin’s predicament seem believable, and though the protagonist’s behavior occasionally borders on the dim-witted, his ethical dilemma generates a good bit of tension. Harold’s extracurricular snooping soon piques Faith’s curiosity and, in the process, opens up a can of worms for James, and Hoult conveys his turmoil—caught between prizing his freedom and believing he’s a good man, and wrestling with guilt over possibly consigning James to unwarranted misfortune—with understated intensity.
Eastwood neither asks for nor receives histrionics from his sturdy cast, always maintaining focus on his characters’ internal and external plights and the will-he-or-won’t-he quandary at the heart of his tale. His film’s craftsmanship is similarly unassuming and effective, with cinematographer Yves Bélanger and composer Mark Mancina lending polish to the captivating proceedings.
For the most part, Juror No. 2 plays out in satisfying fashion, dramatizing the tug-of-war between selfishness and altruism that takes place in every democratic institution. Once the embodiment of vigilantism courtesy of Dirty Harry, Eastwood has spent much of his career grappling with the issue of how people achieve peace, honor, and justice for themselves and society at large, and the heavy cost of (literal and figurative) violence upon the soul and the body politic.
For the illustrious titan, the world has never been as black and white as the archetypal Westerns that he subverted in the ’60s and ’70s. If this is his swan song, he goes out with the modest grace, intelligence, and complexity that’s marked his unparalleled oeuvre—right up to a closing note that doesn’t proffer an answer but instead, fittingly, poses a question.
