12 Angry Men

Doesn't that make you think? That a man, explained it to idiots with logic why the man was innocent. Proving a point sometimes to knowledgeable people is easier than idiots, you know.

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Yeah, I've only been on one jury thus far, but there were lots of pointless digressions and irrational claims in it. That justice is put in the hands of everyday people (even idiots) is kind of the point. And so is the idea that even smart people can think irrational things. Most of the jurors say or do something less than perfectly logical at one point or another, but as a group they eventually come to reasonable conclusions.

I'm not sure what it even means to say that the defense is "circumstantial." That word has no application to the concept of a legal defense. Evidence is what can be circumstantial. And in this case, it is: there is no direct evidence.

And as we learn, there are lots of reasons to doubt. You can make it sound frivolous by saying "a train passed at this time," but what part of the counterargument do you take issue with, specifically? Trains are very loud. Being right next to a train would make it very hard to hear things. It would make identifying a particular voice (particularly a shouting one, as Juror #8 points out) through a ceiling all but impossible. Which means you've got a witness claiming to have heard something it would have been awfully difficult for him to hear.

Sadly, there's no real way to argue about the quality of the dialogue; if somebody doesn't think "According to you it's only going to take 15 seconds!" is brilliant, there's not much I can say to remedy that. But it's been my experience that, when people think less of 12 Angry Men, they almost invariably do so because they find the arguments in it unpersuasive, But if watching it makes you think like one of the jurors, and you find yourself frustrated with the arguments, then the film has already succeeded on at least one level.

By the way, if anyone else is interested in all this, I started a thread years ago called Two Angry Men: Yoda and BobbyB on "12 Angry Men". BobbyB didn't think much of the film, either, and it came out that it was because he found the arguments similarly unpersuasive, which led to a kind of funny (and completely unplanned) situation where we basically just ended up rearguing the key points of the case.

I love 12 Angry Men, on how Henry Fonda went about his explanation in a cool and calm way. Not shouting. All in all, he was always of the opinion that they guy could be or could not be guilty, but the evidence provided was not enough. Logical explanation was all it.

If someone wants a more intense prosecutor and defense battles, I would suggest Anatomy of Murder and Inherit the Wind..

I know. And no, it doesn't make me think, it makes me annoyed, and who is the man using logic in this? They all seem like idiots, including the man pulling out circumstantial evidence from his ass.

I enjoyed this film and I was impressed that it was driven basically by dialogue only and this dialogue managed to make a story for the movie,to study characters and even to have a climax and all other plot points.

Uh, the guy who points out that it's hard to hear things over trains? Or that it's hard to see without glasses? Or that old people move slowly? Or that things he could easily buy himself probably aren't that rare? That all sounds like logic to me.

Yeah, again: it's not evidence, and the word "circumstantial" only applies to evidence, so this is gobbledygook. What I assume you're trying to say is that he doesn't have anything to completely exonerate the boy, but as the film goes to great lengths to point out, that's how the burden of proof is supposed to work.

That said, if you have a specific complaint about a specific argument, let's hear it. So far all I'm hearing is a lot of confusion about the necessary asymetricality of our legal system.

He doesn't like the movie and doesn't want to talk about it (or at least, defend his position). Case closed.

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I never had a problem defending my opinion. I've responded to every questioned asked. So, let's be a little more constructive with our criticisms of me. As I'll try my best to do for this movie.

The problem with the theories is that they are making assumptions, they are assuming that the old-lady wears glasses based on little indents on the sides of her nose. They ultimately made the decision a matter of race towards the end whenever there was a lot of evidence going against it. The boy apparently saw a movie the same night but couldn't remember anything about the movie. Which they somehow justified by a man having seen a "whodunnit" and not being able to remember his either.

- The boy miraculously lost a blade the same night that his father died, and the same model of switch-blade was acknowledged as the murder weapon.

You put a fork in him because that is all she wrote, that's a one in a million possibility.

However, the problem is not the overwhelming evidence against the child, because that is something that would actually make this movie interesting. The problem is how they dispel every conceivable piece of evidence thrown against the child in the most pathetic of ways. The woman across the street who positively identified the kid, is apparently lying, the elderly man down the hall, didn't actually see him either. Oh, no, he's a liar as well.

The boy lost a switch-blade within HOURS of his father's death that was identical to the one at the kill-scene? Pft... I have a switch-blade just like it. Yes, but YOU didn't lose your identical switch-blade within hours of your father's death, he did. Let's say that I have a pair of shoes, I bought them from Payless. They're nothing special, but it's very unlikely that somebody in those shoes is actually going to kill my father. And the man said that he bought the switch-blade at the kid's neighborhood. So, he obviously knew what he was looking for.

"I'm going to kill you!" yelled at the top of his lungs with fire in his breath, but apparently, that is something that is thrown around regularly. Which brings me to the fact that I thought the dialogue was poorly done and forced. They made that somehow be swept under the rug as well by making one of the jurors say that to another one of the jurors. That's all well and good, but that juror probably didn't turn up dead hours later.

Basically, the problem with the idea itself is that it everything is based off of hunch and assumption, not logic, and that goes for both sides. Both guilty and not-guilty have absolutely nothing that particularly proves anything, but the kid being guilty has more weight to it, but the movie acts like it doesn't. Also, in-order for the kid to be acquitted, you have to completely move passed everything against him, which you can't.

You tell me that this is all law, and I say that it's merely common-sense and that is something that is vital to a movie. A movie that lacks it, generally isn't very good. However, the ultimate reasons that I dislike the movie are simply because I didn't find it very entertaining more aggravating than anything. So, you're right in that sense, I did imagine myself as one of the jurors, which is to the film's credit, but that's one of the few perks that I can give to it. I didn't think that the acting was very good, the dialogue isn't realistic, and the "smart" juror having all of the answers, no matter how stupid they were, didn't strike me as believable. The story itself is intriguing, and could have been good, but I think that it came off as more adequate than anything. Certainly not an all-time great. Your rebuttal?

It's only an assumption in the sense that they don't have absolute proof of it, but by that standard virtually everything argued in a court room is an assumption. The question is is whether or not they're reasonable assumptions, and more likely than the alternatives. In this case, what are the alternatives? Identical birthmarks on either side of her nose? That's an assumption, too, and a much less plausible one.

I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean or why it's relevant, but the reason race came up is that it became quite obvious a lot of people were projecting guilt onto the boy because he was from a poor, minority neighborhood. This doesn't prove his innocence, but it's a good illustration of the sort of prejudices people can let affect their conclusions.

As Juror #8 points out, he was asked about it in full view of his murdered father, which isn't the best time for a quick memory test. It's also worth bearing in mind that people didn't watch movies then the way we do now. Now it's an event: you go to see a specific, single movie. Back then you'd see a few in a row, and not necessarily know or care what was playing, as evidenced by the fact that the other juror reels off something like three when asked what he saw. A better modern comparison would be asking you what TV shows or YouTube videos you watched a few days ago.

It is? Based on what? I'd love to see that math.

I don't think they said he lost it the same night his father died; just that he lost it. So that lessens the degree of coincidence considerably. So does the possibility that the person who found it may have used it, in which case there's a causal link and not mere coincidence. And we've established that this is a poor, dangerous neighborhood, and that you can easily buy a similar looking knife from a local pawn shop.

I don't know exactly how to calculate that kind of probability, and I don't think you do, either. But I'm pretty sure it isn't one in a million.

Let's examine the "pathetic" arguments, since you haven't actually done anything to question them other than calling them pathetic. Perhaps you can tell me exactly which parts you dispute: They say the woman couldn't see him because she wasn't wearing glasses, it was night, it was a ways away, and she says she saw the whole thing through the windows of a passing train. These are all reasons to doubt her ability to identify someone.

The old man moved slowly and when they tried to recreate the act of walking the same distance, it took them three times as long. Three times. More than long enough to iron out any imprecision in the recreation.

It's also worth pointing out that they don't say they were lying; they offer lots of psychological reasons why they might exaggerate or simply be mistaken. The only real argument is that they aren't reliable witnesses.

It's pretty weird that you'd go on about "circumstantial" evidence, and then present this, which is a textbook example of it.

But yeah, let's talk about plausibility for a second: how plausible is it that he'd come right back to the scene of the crime a few hours later?

It wasn't swept under the rug, it was talked about quite a bit. For example, in addition to the point that it's a common phrase (I'm not sure why you say "apparently"--have you honestly never heard someone say it in a completely non-violent way?), the primary argument was that the old man couldn't have possibly identified it as the boy's voice, because a train was roaring by and shouting voices, in particular, are harder to identify.

The fact that it's hard to hear things over trains is not a hunch, or an assumption: it's common sense. So is the fact that a man with a limp can't move significant distances quickly.

The movie doesn't act like that at all. Juror #3 (I think it was) has a moment with Juror #8 in the bathroom where he says "suppose you talk us all out of it and the boy really did knife his father?" And the music swells a bit and Juror #8 sits and looks thoughtful. Because it's a thoughtful movie. It doesn't hide from the possibility that he's wrong. But the fact is that the evidence isn't there, and they have to acquit him.

One of the most brilliant things about the film is that we never really know if he did it. We just know that you have to prove it, and you can't prove it with circumstantial things or assumptions about the kind of person he is.

I have no idea what "you have to completely move passed everything" means. In order to acquit, you simply need a reasonable doubt that he committed the crime. You don't need alternative scenarios (though they help), and you don't need to completely invalidate every accusation or explain away every circumstance.

I'm not sure what you're suggesting here. What's common sense? That we should prosecute people for murder based on a preponderance of evidence rather than beyond a reasonable doubt?

Well, my rebuttal is above, because nothing that I can say to defend the film artistically will matter as much as making the case that they were correct to acquit. I suspect most of your more aesthetic objections probably stem from that.

I think that I gave more than enough reasoning as to why I disliked the movie. I didn't "simply" call call them pathetic, I gave valid reasoning as to the things that didn't add up. The movie stacked a lot of happenstance and coincidence on both specific sides of the spectrum of whether or not the character was innocent or guilty. However, I do not feel as though they did very well as proving one side particularly better than the other. And, if anything, I think the side of the character being guilty is the most logical. Therefore, I don't think that the characters were being logical. By extension, that means I believe that the movie is illogical. They voted him not guilty because of reasonable doubt, but I didn't find the doubt very reasonable. Some might disagree, and they do, however, a lot of people see it the same way as I do. That is one of my problems. The other being that I didn't find it very good in-general.

I respect your opinion, as I do everybody that enjoyed the movie, and you've made valid points. I just didn't like it and I've specified why.

Where was that? If there was any actual argument against the holes poked in the testimony of the woman and the old man, I sure didn't see it.

They do? This clearly seems to be the minority view. Not that I'd dismiss it based on that; reasoning isn't any more or less valid based on how many people agree with it.

Obviously you've said before that you find that conclusion more logical, but that's what's being disputed, so this is really just a restatement of your position. And that position isn't really explained by calling things pathetic, expressing sarcasm, or adding words like "somehow" to descriptions of the arguments.

If you'd simply rather not provide much reasoning or defense for your conclusion, that's fine. I certainly wouldn't insist that you do. But I don't think you have yet.

Whether or not I have used sarcasm is irrelevant, because I still voiced my discrepancies. I add "somehow," because I think the audacity of some of the events actually speak for themselves. I don't see what you're not understanding about my opinion, which is why I reiterate it.

I didn't buy into a lot of the ways they remedied the pieces of evidence that were going against the kid. It seemed like it was a pile of assumption faced off with another, and there actually anything of weight that went into it. The screaming may not have been heard from over the roaring train, but as easy as you can assume that the old-lady and old-man are unreliable, you can assume that they ARE reliable. I feel like they dismissed it too hastily. You can't just say that it's impossible for her to have wattled her way to the window, because there is just as much of a chance that she DID make it to the window, and that she did see the boy fleeing the crime.

They say that the old-man is an unreliable witness, but there isn't really much in the way of backing that observation aside from guess-work. They simply assume the witness as unreliable and "recreating" it, doesn't actually work. They can make a hunch, but you have no idea how fast the man was going, especially considering urgent it probably was. So, they can't exactly disprove him entirely, and therefore, you can just ignore it. You say that I haven't asked questions, and that I am just calling things pathetic, but I've been asking questions the entire time. I just haven't flat-out spelled them out.

How can they simply dismiss the fact that the boy had a switch-blade of the exact same kind as the one found at the murder-scene?
- How does the man having the switch-blade dismiss it?
As I've said, the juror told us that he found it in the neighborhood, he had seen the boy's switch-blade, and thus, he'd know what to look for.

He proved that the knife isn't particularly rare, but the chances are slim that the kid would actually lose it from a "hole in his pocket". There's still an uncanny coincidence that's going unaccounted for. I am almost fairly sure that the kid did say that he lost it "that night".
Yes, in a non-violent way, some have said, "I'll kill you," but their father didn't wind up dead. All of these coincidencesaren't put to rest, but are forgotten.

What reason did anyone have to kill the man? Did they take anything? Or did they pop-in, stab him, then bail? Why? Nobody knows? The boy seems to be the only one with an actual motive.

How do you know the lady's eye-sight was bad? The man saw indents on her nose?

You hadn't, actually, which is why I asked where they were. You're sort of starting to now, though, so I'll gladly respond below:

You can't assume either. That's why you examine the circumstances. Circumstances like whether or not your voice witness would have had trouble hearing, or whether or not your eyewitness might have had trouble seeing.

You're mixing up the witnesses: the woman was in bed and says she saw the stabbing through a window. The old man said he saw the boy fleeing. And they didn't say it was "impossible"--they said it was questionable.

And how are you concluding that there's "just as much of a chance" of that, anyway? Not all outcomes are equally likely just by virtue of being possible.


Except that it came out in the film that the old man had a stroke the year before and had to walk with a cane. That's not an assumption or a hunch, that's relevant information that speaks directly to the plausibility of him moving quickly enough.

There are very few things that can be disproved entirely. That's why the whole burden of proof thing exists.


I don't think we really know what the chances are. He was poor; does he have lots of holes in his pockets? There's certainly a coincidence here (though less of one if you think there's a causal connection between him losing it and the murder), but you don't send people off to die for moderate coincidences.

I checked the quote listing on IMDB and see no mention of that. If you want to investigate, be my guest, but I don't think this is correct.

No they're not: the argument was that they couldn't conclude that the boy had been the one to say it at all. And on top of that, it didn't seem like a particularly damning thing to have said.

It sounds like most of your arguments stem from a complete rejection of the burden of proof, given that you expect the defense to find alternative suspects and completely disprove testimony. But if your position is that the entire legal system should be different, then your issue isn't with the film.

The man saw identical indents on either side of her nose that look like the marks people get from wearing glasses, yes. Why, do you have a more plausible explanation? Are they birthmarks that just happen to be in the exact same spot as the marks glasses make? How is that more likely than simply thinking she wore glasses?

Now, a few questions of my own:

1. Do you think it's harder to hear things over loud trains? If so, should that be taken into account when judging how likely someone was to have identified a voice?[/b]

2. Do you think it's harder to see at night, or through a rapidly passing train? If so, should that also be taken into accounting when considering the legitimacy of someone's eyewitness testimony?

3. Do you think old men who've had strokes and use canes usually maintain the ability to move quickly?

4. Why would the boy would return to the crime scene a few hours after committing the murder?

I agree that this is a fairly conventional film. It is not something revolutionary like 2001 or even Citizen Kane.

But I found it an almost perfectly well made film and one 1950's film that like Seven Samurai, is entertaining even to an audience used to CGI effects all over.

Do you think old men who've had strokes and use canes usually maintain the ability to move quickly? I don't like the way that they measured it, because I feel like it's almost certainly inaccurate. Also, if he had heard yelling, (over the freight train) then it's possible that the character could have quickened his pace out of urgency. And it's also possible that he did in-fact hear over the train.

Why would the boy would return to the crime scene a few hours after committing the murder? I think that it can easily be assumed that he went back in-order to get his things. He's poor and he's also young, probably didn't have much of an education, and so, it'd be difficult for him to think about.

Do you think it's harder to hear things over loud trains? If so, should that be taken into account when judging how likely someone was to have identified a voice? Do you think it's harder to see at night, or through a rapidly passing train? If so, should that also be taken into accounting when considering the legitimacy of someone's eyewitness testimony? I didn't deny any of them, but altogether, I don't think that evidence should be treated as a vacuum. There being some doubt to all of the pieces of evidence doesn't mean that it all adds up to reasonable doubt. You'd have to be very, very unfortunate to face so many coincidences and staggering misidentifications.

It sounds like most of your arguments stem from a complete rejection of the burden of proof, given that you expect the defense to find alternative suspects and completely disprove testimony. But if your position is that the entire legal system should be different, then your issue isn't with the film?
To be fair, the fact that there is no other character with a motive is a tally-mark against him. Why is there a character that randomly broke into somebody's house, stabbed them, then left? There's nothing to gain there, and not one of the characters questioned it.

Are they birthmarks that just happen to be in the exact same spot as the marks glasses make?
Or maybe the old-man, vision probably impaired, is mistaken. Or maybe she's near-sighted? If he can make such a long-shot then so can I.

I'm sure it is, but that's why the degree of difference is important. It's not that he said 15 seconds and it took them 20. A small difference could easily be ascribed to the roughness of the experiment. But it was close to three times as long.

Possible is not the same thing as plausible, let alone probable. If you want to talk about making assumptions and going on hunches, you can't turn around and take his testimony on faith because it's possible he heard over a train.

Also, I'm getting the impression you may have forgotten that he didn't say he merely heard over the train, but heard over the train well enough to identify the boy, specifically. That's much, much less believable than simply hearing a yell.

What things could possibly be so important that he'd go back to a place where he'd just murdered someone? The only thing that would be worth that risk is the murder weapon. And they already had that argument in the film: somebody suggests that he went back because he'd panicked when he realized he'd left the knife, but the knife had no fingerprints on it, which means he was calm and level-headed enough to wipe them off.

Seriously? You think you need a formal education to know you shouldn't return to the place you just murdered someone? And if he was so dumb not to know that, how was he sharp enough to know to wipe his fingerprints off? Heck, if he remembered to clean the weapon, why didn't he take it? It doesn't make a lick of sense.

I don't think two qualifies as "staggering." But lots of shaky evidence doesn't, through sheer numbers, add up to any hard evidence.

One of the points of the movie is that everybody treats this like an open-and-shut case. They don't have any other suspects because they already think they've got their man. And it's simply not accurate to say nobody else had motive: we have no idea what kind of life this man lived. It doesn't come up. The jurors have no reason to ask, because it's not part of the evidence available to them. This isn't a murder mystery, where you have to pick from a cast of characters. Their job isn't to decide who did it: their job is to decide if the boy did it. The fact that there is no other suspect is absolutely not a mark against him, and legally it's not supposed to be.

If you don't think our legal system is logical, then you're obviously not going to find a film about it particularly logical, either.

A second juror corroborated that the marks were there. And I think you mean far-sighted. Amusingly, Juror #3 makes that exact point. And it's an excellent point: maybe she is far-sighted. And you know what Juror #8 says in response? The exact quote is: "I only know the woman's sight is in question now." And that's the point. That's what reasonable doubt is.

I just recently saw this film in my sociology class (the black-and-white version with Henry Fonda), and I gotta say: definitely one of the single best films I've seen...ever. The acting was fantastic across the board, the drama was intense, there were light bits of humor here and there, and I couldn't help but get sucked into watching just these 12 men arguing over whether or not someone committed murder, in spite of whatever prejudice each man had at the time. There's not one bad thing about this film, except for the kind of abrupt change of heart from Juror #3, which felt more like a rushed conclusion than anything. Definitely going on my top 10 list. Not sure which film will get bumped though. Gonna have to think about it.

Loooove this movie (hence my name). My #2 favorite film of all time behind Barry Lyndon, absolute perfection. So good that it hurts, honestly. The best part about it is that it'll appeal to every generation, black-and-white fans and not, w/e- it's immortal filmmaking at its finest. No gimmicks, stunts, anything like that- just powerful drama.