Juror #2

Clint Eastwood’s latest legal thriller Juror #2 has a very odd and unusual rollout; there is speculation that the release is in spite of current Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav, who is on record of being disappointed by Eastwood’s Cry Macho COVID-19 box office returns, and how Juror #2 has been buried by WB is certainly bizarre. Now playing in very limited theaters in less than 50 markets, WB has buried a film that could have certainly held box-office success and Oscar potential if marketed correctly. Regardless of the strategy, Eastwood’s latest is a dramatically satisfying, well-acted, and engrossing old-fashioned courtroom drama filled with many ideas about the legal system, justice, confirmation bias, and objective reality. The film feels like it belongs in the 90s or 2000s, where Hollywood used to give the greenlight to adult dramas and thrillers like this, but now as we live in times of maximalism with IP, endless sequels, and studios taking very little risk on original material, even a film directed by a renowned and iconic Oscar-winning filmmaker like Eastwood (Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby) can’t get a proper release in the multiplex that is surrounded by big-budget IP movies and sequels that have over $200 million budgets. Like the 90s and 2000s courtroom dramas such as Philadelphia, Primal Fear, Sleepers, A Time to Kill, and Runaway Jury, the film is filled through moral conundrums, distrust in the institutions, and ulterior motives that fuel other people’s opportunities to further their own self-interest.

Magazine journalist Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult) lives with his pregnant wife and schoolteacher, Ally (Zoey Deutch). They live in a small town in the state of Georgia, and Ally is late into her pregnancy. The late-term pregnancy does put Ally at a health risk; she had a miscarriage before with twins, and both Justin and Ally hold anxiety in hopes that doesn’t occur again. One day, when Justin is summoned into court for local jury duty, he is selected to a case that recalls a night on a late rainy night the year prior of him driving home alone and crashing something that he believes was a deer at a crossroads that has a deer warning sign. Apparently, Justin hasn’t heard of the high-profile case on a local level, and that is one of the major flaws and plot holes with first-time screenwriter Jonathan Abrams debut screenplay. There are many other missteps in the screenplay that include J. K. Simmons as Harold, a former homicide detective and fellow juror who ends up obtaining his own investigation into all the local vehicles in the area that got car front-end bodywork done in the area. Of course, Justin’s personal vehicle is on the list, which furthers his own guilt, which certainly builds up for some engrossing courtroom drama but is illogical considering this is the first investigative step detectives and prosecutors do during potential hit-and-run deaths.

Of course, it’s just a film, but it raises some fascinating realistic ethics and practices about our modern society where you can spot the films implausibility’s and severe flaws in the plotting from a mile away. The saving grace here is Eastwood’s skilled directing and creative choices, which include a very effective cross-cutting montage of Justin recollecting the night of the accident and how it bounces back to what he witnessed that night of the suspect, Michel Sythe (Gabriel Basso), getting rough and shouting at his girlfriend Kendall (Francesca Eastwood, daughter of Clint Eastwood).

Courtesy Warner Bros.

The authorities and detectives do not know about the possibility of the hit-or-run. As Harold points out in deliberation, the police detectives have blinders on, and apparently so do most of the juror members who hold disdain for Sythe being a drug dealer that has harmed his community. His confirmation bias will never allow him to be objective. As does the assistant DA named Faith Killebrew (Toni Collette), who is actually running for the county district attorney race, in which a conviction will lead to a guaranteed 5-point advantage. Eventually she begins to observe there is further evidence, and her objective reality widens once she notices plot holes in the case that reassures that possibility of Sythe being innocent. Styhe’s defense attorney Eric Resnick has a hunch he is innocent, but all he has is a hunch. Faith and Eric are also drinking buddies who are somehow allowed to get drinks together as opposing attorneys, but it is a small town after all.

The movie is less than a murder mystery as it offers some illuminating social commentary on confirmation bias—how we carry on society in only believing what we want to believe while rejecting objective reality and not looking at all the evidence and facts. Eastwood and writer Abrams drive home the point, perhaps even in a heavy-handed way, in how our already flawed justice system is now being compromised by stubbornness and egocentrism where evidence can challenge one’s prejudices and worldviews. Eastwood uses the motif of Lady Justice with blinders on throughout. The film explores the truth and how the truth and justice are challenged with ethics, moral conundrums, and even exchanged for altruism. Part of me wishes that Eastwood dived deeper into these ideas and left for even more complexity the way he did with the brilliant 2003 masterpiece Mystic River, and a part of me wishes it was more emotionally charged like Million Dollar Baby. Even so, Eastwood’s potential swan song ends on a satisfying note thanks to the very compelling performance by Nicholas Hoult, who finds himself fighting for justice and truth while being contradictory about it at the same time to save his own self-interest. With that, Eastwood gives glimpses of who we are as a society during these bizarre times where the truth is indeed often undermined and compromised for one’s gain.

JUROR #2 is now playing in limited theaters. It will be available on HBO MAX December, 20th