12 Angry Men is on my top ten list of all time

Oh okay, yep that's fair enough. Maybe I'm just pessimistic in my views, but I feel I know people in real life, that would totally throw someone's life away, to not miss a ball game, but I guess that is just my dark view of some people, and the world.

Many of the jurors in the movie would have been eliminated (in real life) by the defense attorney during the jury selection of the movie.

Oh yeah, but it was established in the movie that Henry Fonda's juror felt that the defense attorney didn't really care about the case, and just wanted to get it over with, hence he may not have bothered to go through with eliminating many of the jurors.

This is kinda funny because the first jury I sat on had a character like this. He wasn't anxious to get to a ballgame, but was a businessman who claimed he had a business to run - he did not want jury duty.

It was ironic because when he made his case during selection he was so adamant about not serving that the judge "punished" him by decreeing he would sit on the jury simply due to his attitude that he was too important to have jury duty! The judge was out to teach this man a lesson.

The judge really shouldn't have done that because it ended up obstructing justice by having this guy on anyone's jury. All he wanted to do was get out of there, and he badgered everyone to hurry up when considering the case (even during one lunch while the case was ongoing, he went to each other juror to try to convince them of what he felt the obvious verdict would be before the entire case had been heard in order to expedite the coming deliberation.)

I was tempted to report him (and sometimes wish I'd had) because getting his jury duty over with was his only agenda - he could not have cared less about the case.

Up until the last minute of deliberation the guy was pressuring everyone and becoming exasperated whenever any juror wanted to discuss anything or examine evidence.

After the case was over I talked to another juror on our way to the parking deck and we both felt things had gone very wrong due to this one guy and the judge's decision to force him to do his jury duty - it ended up not being fair to the plaintiff to have someone like that on their jury just because the judge wanted to teach an unwilling citizen about public service.

Oh that doesn't sound good at all.

But that's actually a good idea for a movie right there. A judge puts a bad juror on a jury, just to teach him a lesson and he ends up obstructing the case.

When this happened in real life, and the judge put this unwilling man in the jury, did the attorneys on either side object to this at all?

I'll tell you this - it really instilled some doubts in me as to how the justice system (specifically jury system) works.

Anyone of us could have a decision altered by one unwilling participant who feels they're being put upon to serve. The case I sat on was a medical malpractice suit, but in more important cases, having one aberrant juror in the box could be the difference between life and death.

I had a friend who used to ask why there isn't a voluntary jury service - there is a pool of people in society who would love to volunteer and get their 5 bucks a day to sit on a case: the unemployed, retired people, those interested in court cases, the bored, etc. Not that the government would have to eliminate the random selection process they have now, but a contingent of volunteers could serve as a back-up pool for juries and allow greater leeway in exemptions, dismissals or for hardship cases.

To the best of my memory, I believe the judge made his decree about this juror before the lawyers could accept or reject him - basically the judge ruled this guy was going to serve no matter what just because of his attitude and made his decision clear to the lawyers.

If the guy hadn't been so arrogant, he might have been dismissed, but apparently he pissed the judge off.

It was kind of a no-win situation because if the judge had rewarded the guy and let him go, it would set a precedent - then you'd have to allow anyone who didn't want to be there to go (which is pretty much everyone), but by punishing him with this display, it created a very uncomfortable jury situation and an unfair case for the parties involved.

In hindsight, we (anyone on the jury) probably should have gone to the bailiff and reported the guy after he tried to influence people and rush them - his discussing the case before it was over was a breaking of the rules, and the way he went about it was pretty outrageous (but nobody wanted to be the snitch).

Yeah I would actually like that job as well, and would like to volunteer if I could.

That's a good point. Like any movie it works for some and not for others. Most people seem to like 12 Angry Men, I thought it was great the first time I watched it, but then on the second watch I felt like it was emotionally manipulating me like Steven Spielberg is sometimes accused of.

I watched it again recently and I kind of see what you mean now, Rules - especially with the last scene (with Lee J. Cobb).

We all get that he was trying to take his dissatisfaction with his own life and relationships out on the defendant by being quick to judge, but the way it was done was over-dramatic and unrealistic (don't think any guy in real life would have pulled out a photo of their son and torn it up in a rage then become panicked with sorrow over what they'd done as they tried to gather the pieces of the photo together as if trying to symbolically restore the relationship! Not in front of a room full of strangers anyway!)

My question with the movie has always been what was the ethnicity of the defendant (after Ed Begley Sr. goes on with his "those people" rant)? They show him in the beginning, but he just looks like a rather average Caucasian type (was he Slavic, Italian, Jewish?)

I know it's not supposed to matter, but it seemed a bit peculiar that an older white man (Begley) would voice such prejudice over these ethnicities whereas, at the time, such a man might have felt comfortable airing such bias toward certain other minorities while in a room full of white men.

It's been awhile since I've seen the movie and I've only seen it twice, but I thought the kid was suppose to be Puerto Rican. But I assume they never actually said what his ethnicity was.

I was just now reading hated it reviews on IMDB and one of them went into great detail that the film had a leftist agenda. I don't know about all that, but it was an interesting, albeit inflammatory read.

I looked up the question and yes, he was "supposed" to be Hispanic even though they never mention it, but, if you watch the beginning of the film it's a bit ambiguous based on the actor they used (maybe intentionally so).

Here's a photo:


He doesn't look particularly Puerto Rican, but he could be... he could also be Eastern European, Arab, Persian, Israeli, Italian, Hispanic, Portuguese, South American, Native American, Asian Indian, or just a white kid of European decent from the Bowery. The only thing that's plain to see is he's most likely not African American or Eastern Asian.

I didn't think that the Begley character's prejudice against people from the slums though, and not what their races may be. Just people from the slums in general he hates.

Definitely a really good movie for me. Top 100 material