Reviews

The real key to 12 Angry Men's success is Reginald Rose's tightly-wound script, which provides all the jurors [who seem to be heading, shall we say, due west] with flaws and personalities and then as it slowly reveals all of the people we've never seen in the film (those mentioned or testifying duri...

Screenwriter Reginald Rose has written what appears to be a simplistic story on the surface and the fact that Henry Fonda is playing the lone juror, we pretty much know what's going to happen, even knowing that the jurors have been instructed that their verdict must be unanimous and if the boy is f...

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.

We have a sort of Inception moment partway through the movie where Fonda's character, Davis (he's one of maybe 3 characters ever named, but not referred to by name), is in the bathroom and another character asks him, "What if you convince all of us he's innocent and he really did do it?"

The most powerful and moving parts of the film were the face-offs between the characters, which were brilliantly filmed: the camera zooms right in on them both as they speak their pieces, which created bucket loads of tension.

With the deaths of Jack Warden (Juror #7) on July 19, 2006 and Jack Klugman (Juror #5) on December 24, 2012, none of the twelve stars of 12 Angry Men (1957) are still alive.

While this does not take anything away form your enjoyment of the film while enjoying the journey, it was problematic as I began to dwell on the film after viewing.

We see the camera close in on the Jurors as the film goes on, and different level shots used effectively such as the close up view of Juror #9 at the beginning of the film as he tries to express his point to the other men.

Overall, 12 Angry Men is one of my all-time favorite movies. This is definitely a classic and I don’t think it should be considered anything less than that.

Though I can't say this film would be as great on further viewings - since it mostly spends it's time reviewing suspenseful facts and unfolding like a mystery movie.