Growing up in the 60’s my first experience with courtroom drama was watching Perry Mason defending the innocent by uncovering all the hidden facts. The first courtroom movie that I remember was the classic ’12 Angry Men’ Made in 1957, the same year as the first series of Perry Mason, the film tells the story of a jury that has to consider the innocence or guilt of an 18-year-old boy accused of killing his father. If found guilty the boy would face a mandatory death sentence.
95% of the film is shot in the one room to which the jury has retired to consider their verdict. In considering the age of the movie, the first thing you notice is that to be judged by your ‘equals’ in the 1950’s meant to sit before 12 white males. As the jurors enter the room, their flippant remarks and labelling of the male defendant, who comes from the slums, shows a wide range of bias, bigotry and lack of concern for the outcome they are to make a judgement on. What appears to be a simple decision of all voting guilty is thrown into disarray when juror 7, Henry Fonda, goes against the grain and votes Not Guilty. So begins a journey that requires each man present to consider their own status in life and whether there may be a reasonable doubt that the boy is guilty.
There is no doubt that the movie has aged but the exploration of each jurors motivation helps each character develop. The decision to only identify each man by their juror number and with no background provided the viewer is free to identify with one or more characters based on their own views of morality and ethics. The room has no cooling and as the heat of the day grows and the men become more visibly uncomfortable the claustrophobic atmosphere helps build the tension. The use of close-ups as characters make statements also gives you a sense of how small the room is as tempers fray.
While the movie has aged the premise is not much different to a number of documentaries shown recently that ask people to face their own intolerances such as refugees or indigenous communities. If the defendant was not an abused boy from the New York slums but an aboriginal or Muslim youth from the western suburbs of Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane I believe we would see ‘our peers’ struggle with a similar dilemma as the cast of this movie. One by one each character has to question their initial conclusion and determine whether the verdict of guilty should stand.
While Henry Fonda is the star of the movie, the cast many of the respected male actors of the period with Lee J Cobb, Martin Balsam, Jack Warden, E.G Marshall and a young Jack Klugman of Quincy and The Odd Couple fame. To watch the movie now the acting is certainly over dramatic in parts but the idea of giving everyone a fair go, doing what is right when the numbers are against you and facing your own bias when judging others are still important concepts today. If you are into your older movies and haven’t seen 12 Angry Men take the time to watch it on Netflix
I give it 8 friends out of 10