Citizen Rules...Cinemaesque Chat-n-Review

Review: I've seen Ida Lupino in earlier films and knew she had directed, but I had never seen one until now. She does a fantastic job as a director! I love the way she goes with down-angled closeup shots, during the opening credits. It's too bad the credits had to roll over her work as the opening shots of the hitch-hiker's boots & the pavement of the road & the tires of the victim's car...are intense.

I love the way she keeps the film tense with closeup shots in the car's interior...it adds a sense of claustrophobia which is perfect for a story about two men held captive by a psycho. We also get a few beautiful wide shots, taken from up above on the rocks, as the car speeds along. The rock location is not only cool looking, but gives a sense of bleakness and isolation as does the stories choice of location in a remote region of Mexico. Written by Ida Lupino and her husband Collier, this is a stark, no nonsense script and the cinematography matches that to a tee.

I always like Edmund O'Brien, he's particular good here. And William Talman as the psycho hitch-hiker made one helluva bad guy.

+

Superb story telling of a big story arch that encompasses idealism, romance, individuality and action too....All done with characters who act and speak in-accordance with their established personalities and back story. In other words they act real and have real convictions, which gives each of the characters real motivation for doing what they do.

Breathtaking cinematography, Wow! does this film look great! It's the gorgeous shooting locations, like the open vast prairie that fills the screen, or the stark white of Blanco Canyon...and the Terrill mansion! Was that cool looking or what?....And the camera work itself takes full advantage of this epic vastness. This should have won the Oscar for best cinematography.

Majestic music score, Right off the bat I noticed how special the music score was. It never over powered the film but really added to the epic feel of the movie. I loved it...and the score was nominated for an Oscar too.

Great Performances, Gregory Peck is the man! The more I see of him, the more I like him. He co-produced the film along with William Wyler and his personal style is apparent. I thought all the actors did a top notch job, especially Burl Ives who was a powerhouse, he gave one of the most powerful speeches I've seen done. Burl Ives did win a well deserved Oscar for best supporting actor.



Parting thoughts, At 2 hours and 45 minutes, this is a long movie, but the time flew by! There was always something going on that furthered the story and the character arcs.....I do believe I have a new Top 10 Favorite!

Haven't seen Wild River or Hitchhiker since I was a kid; need to revisit them.
Have never seen Big Country, been curious to and even more so since your review.

Hey Ed....Big Country was Cricket's nomination in the 50s Hof Part 2. It came in at #3, not to shabby seeing how a lot of folks aren't real fond of westerns. I loved it so much I added it to my Top 10 list

Director: David Steinberg
Writers: Dana Olsen, David Steinberg
Cast: John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy
Genre: Comedy

About: John Candy plays a likable goof (go figure!) he's out of money and dreams of being a drummer. He works his butt off as a chauffeur along with his best friend Joe Flaherty. Somehow Candy ends up engaged to a congressman's daughter...Throw in a sleezy, D-budget movie director and a religious cult with an aerobics class as a front and you get.....Going Beserk

Review: With such a zany script that features three of SCTV's top comediennes, how could this miss? But it does! Actually there's funny gags and lines, but for some reason the movie just doesn't seem funny.

The best I can figure is: for humor to work on the screen, the set up and the timing of the jokes, along with the reaction of the other characters are ultra important. This movie looks good on paper but doesn't deliver on the laughs, thanks to director.

Oddly for John Candy, he delivers some very crude humor that seems out of place and even misses as shock value. Tweens, might find the crude jokes funny but I doubt his fans would.

The one time shining spot in this movie is the black & white dream sequences, which lampoons the 1950s TV show Father Knows Best...and features John Candy as next door neighbor, Beaver Cleaver. A role he made famous on SCTV. I wish this skit had been the basis for the movie, because then it would have been a film worthy of John Candy's talents.

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Review: I seen this movie years ago and at the time really liked it. But when I watched it again with a critical eye, I found it to be heavy on propaganda and pushing a pacifist ideology, and it's not very convincing at doing either. The movie comes on like a sledge hammer with the 11 jurors who want to convict, looking like utter fools, as they foam at the mouth with their ridiculous reasons for wanting a guilty verdict. Their reasons to convict are so contrived and outright silly that it demotes the 11 jurors to mere cartoon caricatures.

Meanwhile the only 'sensible' person is the calm and collected juror played by Henry Fonda who believes the accused might be innocent. Then he precedes to come up with numerous reasons to support his belief. The reasons are the key to this movie. Had his reasonings had solid logic behind them, this would have been a better film, but the reasons for a not guilty verdict have more holes than swiss cheese.

I found the acting way over the top...especially Lee J. Cobb who tore up the scenery. He was so audibly loud that he drowned out the other actors. Lee J. Cobb, Ed Begley and the guy who wanted to convict the accused of murder so that he could get to the ball game, were the worst of the two-dimensional caricatures. Tension is created by repeatly yelling 'let's hurry up!'...'not another vote!' And they were yelling that with in minutes of getting into the jury room too, which is way too hard to believe.

The 'antagonist jurors' don't hold to their guilty verdict out of a belief in facts but instead have 'personal demons' that cause them to cast a guilty vote...They don't act or speak out of their convictions in the trails facts...(that would have been interesting!). Their function in the film was to yell and bully the other jurors to create tension, and that's lazy writing. They're written as court jesters, and that too is lazy writing.

The film lays it on too thick and lacks any subtly. It would have been a much better film if there was at least some tangible evidence for the 'voted guilty jurors' to have a foundation for their belief that the accused was indeed guilty.

I was however impressed with the cinematography, especially the establishing camera shot of the court house building. I loved the way the camera made the building look monolithic and imposing. Then the camera goes inside to an upper deck and looks down at the people coming into the building, and it makes them look so small and insignificant....Brilliantly done!

Then the camera shot becomes close up & personal as we follow different people down the long corridors. Finally the camera pauses for 2 seconds at these huge and foreboding courtroom doors. Then into the courtroom itself.....What a wonderfully done opening shot! To bad the script and the questioning of evidence hadn't been up to the same level of excellence.

First time hearing of Wild River, sounds real good.

Me too, I hadn't really known anything about it, until I watched it. It starts out odd, with actual b&w footage of the Tennessee river flood and it's destruction, then a man telling how in the flood he had lost his wife and baby girl as the water pulled them out of his arms. It's powerful stuff because it's real, but I think maybe it put a damper on the film and that's why it's not well known. But it should be.

+rep for writing a review that states your thoughts and feelings and why you didn't like it.

I've only seen 12 Angry Men once and that was a long time ago, so I can't put up a proper discussion right now, especially since your points or very specific. But personally I remember loving the movie. We'll see with a revisit.

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Okay. I'm a bit surprised at the rating for 12 Angry Men.
However, all your criticisms are valid. Despite the heavy-handed morality lesson, the lack of realism, a bit of dubious logic in both verdict directions, the fact that the movie is dated, and the over-the-top characters, I've always found this film gripping & entertaining from start to finish. I've always rated it a 5 of 5!

If there was no drama in "12 Angry Men", you would have "12 Reserved Men".

Also, I think Henry Fonda represents the idea of "burden of proof."
The Prosecution bears the burden of proof. The Defense does not have to prove that the accused did not do it, they don't have to prove anything. Fonda's character simply brings up questions that create reasonable doubt. They don't prove anything one way or another (as is pointed out to him multiple times by other jurors), but they create doubt that the Prosecution's scenario is 100% accurate.

And a little bit of reasonable doubt is all that's necessary to say that the Prosecution has not met the burden of proof - and therefore the verdict must be not guilty. "Not guilty" never means "innocent," it only means that the accusers did not prove their case or that there were enough variables still left on the table as to create reasonable doubt that the accusation is completely irrefutable.

I'm not arguing with Rules' synopsis - which is totally valid, just providing reasons why it wasn't necessary that Fonda's character's theories all make perfect sense - they didn't have to since all he was doing was establishing doubt in the minds of other jurors.

Glad an expert came in and stated a lot of what I probably would have if I had seen it many times before. Thanks, Steel!

But yeah, my short and direct fragmented point of view would simply be, that I think the movie is a great exercise in drama and how to create it, continue it and keep it afloat. It is pretty basic in its formula but very precise and well handled in its execution. Discussion, new point, discussion, new point is the very thinly drawn basic of it; and I think it's wonderfully done and at the least very entertaining and exciting to follow.

Yup, I usually try to give reasons why I love/hate a film. It's the films I don't feel anything about that are hard for me to write a review for.

I loved it too, until I watched it again a few months ago. Then it seemed to me like a film that was really good at manipulating the audiences emotions.

Once I started looking at the decisions the director took to achieve those emotionally ends, the film fall apart for me. And the more it smacked of a PC, agenda movie.

I have to laugh at the referential of evidence by Henry Fonda. Especially the eye witness testimony of the lady who from across the street, under oath said she had seen the accused stab his father. But....Fonda notices she has marks on her nose and concludes that she must have needed glasses for vision and couldn't had time to put them on and so must have been lying.

No one brings up the question if she wore sun glasses to court and took them off prior to entering the building, hence the glass marks on her nose...nor did anyone bring up the idea that she could have been wearing reading glasses, which is not uncommon for someone of her age and there forth didn't need glasses for distances vision, making her testimony accurate.

That reminds me of the O.J. Simpson trial and the Johnnie Cochran defense that if the leather gloves wore by the murderer didn't fit O.J. then he must be innocent. "If it don't fit, you must acquit"

Actually maybe 12 Angry Men is brilliant in a reverse way. It aims to show that the court system is stacked against the poor, who can't get a fair trial. But instead the film shows the court system is flawed in another way: any lame brain can make far fetched claims that evidence is not accurate with hyperbola and in that way derail the justices system.

I really dislike 12 Angry Men, because it's sloppy and emotionally weighted one way. Oh and Henry Fonda was annoying, hell all the jurors were cartoon caricatures. It's hard to get a serious film when the bad guys wear black hats and twirl their mustaches.

I'm not an expert, but I have sat on 3 juries. Once I was foreman!

But I agree, the backdrop is the legal / jury system, the movie is about the drama, the characters and the level of entertainment that results from their interaction.

You know my buttons, don't you, Rules?
Touche'!

After reading that I can never view it the same.
Just kidding - it's still a favorite.

That's a favorite subject, but I'm not expert on it.
I may get bashed for this, but... from a logical point of view I think the evidence showed that O.J. was guilty, but from a purely legal standpoint I can't fault the jury for their verdict.

Another thing (and I'm not sure how it went down in the O.J. case) is the judge's instructions to the jury - they are often surprising and sometimes make it so that the jury can only decide one way. In one jury I sat on, at the last minute before deliberating the judge instructed us that we were not permitted to look at or review any hospital documentation - but it was a medical malpractice suit and the documentation was the whole case - that's where all the evidence was - without it there was no case. So even though we felt bad for the victim (who'd been messed up for life) we had to find the defendant (the Dr.) not guilty all because of the judge's last minute instructions.

In short, I think the glove was not the deciding factor in the O.J. case, but it was the doubt created by the police mishandling of evidence. The case was lost due to a poor job done by the Prosecution, the initial way police handled the investigation and things like discrediting Furhman's character - these created reasonable doubt.

Good post Captain. I'd agree with you that the police and prosecution botched the OJ trial. Though he's still guiltily in my book!

I've never sat on a jury, so it's interesting to hear the actual behind the scenes happenings from you. Have you seen the movie Judgement at Nuremberg? I would call that a literal master piece of high believability of a court trial.

It wasn't Fonda that mentioned the marks on her nose - it was the old man who did and put forth the theory that the witness needed glasses to see. The old man also said the witness tried to look about 20 years younger than she was. The defense attorney (public defender) didn't bring any of this up, so the jury was giving the accused what he never had - a questioning of the witness' veracity and the capability of her being able to clearly see the crime and give "eyewitness" testimony. Lee J. Cobb even gave the same argument that CR does about the glasses being used for other things, but the other jurors want to see how the totality of her testimony holds up, not just the glasses. In subsequent courtroom dramas, they just ask the witness to identify something from a distance and when the witness can't see well enough to be believed, her testimony is discounted, but in this film that can't be done, so it's up to the jury who come to believe and accept that the boy had a weak defense and that they will do all to make up for what they see as an unfair trial through incompetent defense.

The point of the movie is that things don't always seem to be how they first appear. The jury voted 11-1 to convict the boy without a word discussed, but then Fonda brings up some things and others do too. It's funny to hear a film made in the middle of the Eisenhower Administration called "PC". Yes, it's liberal, but the era needed some liberality, don't you think?

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Just watched it again about 2 weeks ago!

P.S. On one jury I was on a guy who put up a fuss about being selected was forced to serve by the judge (apparently a punishment due to the guy's attitude that he was above jury duty).
This turned out to be a mistake. The guy ended up being like Jack Warden's character in 12 Angry Men. He didn't want to be there and started browbeating other jurors to come to a quick decision so he could get back to his business. In hindsight, I think I should have reported the guy. He wasn't concerned with the outcome, only that it get over with. And unfortunately I think he did alter the outcome - if we'd deliberated longer I think the plaintiff would've gotten more compensation. So, it goes to show that the system is not perfect, and one judge trying to make a point to an unwilling individual created a rushed and unfair outcome for a plaintiff.