'Juror #2' is John Grisham for dummies
WB
“What if it’s ‘12 Angry Men’ … but the killer was Henry Fonda?” is one of the dumbest pitches I’ve heard in a while. Yet here we are, a world where 94-year-old director Clint Eastwood's (“Unforgiven,” “Sully”) latest bites countless beats from Sidney Lumet’s 1957 classic -- with the tweak that this time juror #2, a writer named Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult) whose pregnant wife (Zoey Deutch) is due very soon, quickly realizes that the murder he’s evaluating happened on the same night he might’ve hit a deer or maybe something else. Oh fingernail-biting silliness, what will this recovering alcoholic and not especially inconspicuous dude do?
Nowhere in the same ballpark as fun or the same state as thought-provoking, this Georgia-set legal drama means to evoke ‘90s movies that, yes, we very much need to get back. But anyone who’s seen one “Law and Order” episode or spent eight seconds considering the limitations of the legal system will sometimes find “Juror #2” accidentally funny and often find it only slightly less painful than a gavel to the knuckles. (The exploitation of family tragedy and clunky approach to addiction are both rough.) A miscast Toni Collette leads the prosecution’s meager case that many, many jurors are swayed by anyway, until Justin and a former detective played by J.K. Simmons plant seeds of skepticism while also furthering writer Jonathan Abrams’ determination to mix nonstop contrivance with incredibly unintelligent characters. Every discussion is insultingly obvious on all levels, with the film’s depressing throughline being that people in many different important roles are often bad at their jobs.
Can you have a good time trying to force yourself to wonder what’s going to happen, even though the attempts at ambiguity or moral complexity here are ridiculous? Sure, but that also means shrugging off a ton of things left out of or mishandled in the trial as well as a final upheaval of the jury’s process that couldn’t possibly be less convincing. Hoult, so good in “The Order,” is forced to just look worried a lot, but he fares better than much of the supporting cast, including Leslie Bibb as the jury forewoman, Cedric Yarbrough as a juror absolutely positive of the accused’s guilt, and Deutch as a teacher who helped Justin get his life together. One particular scene (recalling a great moment in “The Town”) should generate a ton of suspense, and Eastwood mucks it up.
It’s only encouraged to make movies that don’t get made much anymore if you do it well. But Eastwood also thought “The 15:17 to Paris” was a good idea, so I don’t know why I’m surprised.
D
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