Juror #2

Opening with a black and white version of the Warner Brothers logo, moving onto a drawing of blind justice, Juror #2 feels old-fashioned from the off. That's only heightened when Justin Kemp leads his expectant wife, blindfolded, into what'll be their child's nursery. Nicholas Hoult is he, Zoey Deutch is she, and between that and the title you're most of the way to what's going on.

It's improbable, of course. Chatham County in Georgia is the easternmost of that state, contains the major municipality of Savannah. The odds of your man being in the pool called from the 300,000 and change who call it home are minimal, but then so are the odds that Clint Eastwood would already have directed a courtroom drama set here.

That's Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil if you're wondering. There are other Eastwood connections too, a hostelry important to the plot is called Rowdy's, one assumes Yates' Wine Lodge haven't crossed the Atlantic. Frequent Eastwood editor Joel Cox is behind the camera, but it's a different scion of the Eastwood clan with a minor role.

Less minor is JK Simmons, his presence on the jury a sure indicator that he's doing more than making up numbers. The opposing attorneys, Toni Colette and Chris Messina could perhaps have done with watching My Cousin Vinnie as a refresher. If you know your voir dire from your habeas corpus or your green automobiles from one another you're better equipped than many in the script. A début for writer Jonathan A Abrams, I've been trying to find other works anywhere. A producer credit on Escape Plan doesn't quite cut it, but he also wrote the book and story for Huey Lewis & The News jukebox musical The Heart Of Rock And Roll. He's also apparently responsible for the FX TV series about the life of teppanyaki-chain Benihana's founder Hiroaki Aoki. I'm not sure how proportionate your likely enjoyment of this film will be to the number of words in that sentence you understand immediately, but suffice to say that presentation of preparation is perhaps lacking.

Abrams' work in musicals and entertainment-dining documentary doesn't explain why Juror #2 feels so stagey. Some of that might be Eastwood's direction, but there are often signs that in his nearly 70 years in the business he's learned a few things. The shadow of venetian blinds as bars across a guilty man's face, the way light and staging foreground our protagonist with the word "responsible" heavy in the air. Elsewhere it seems that lessons have not been retained.

I'm not sure Nicholas Hoult has the charisma to carry this. I know the script doesn't have the weight. The debts owed to 12 Angry Men would be enough to draw bailiffs if there weren't already officers of the court about. Time after time we get what amounts to "you have to tell me if you're a cop" scriptwriting. It's not a real part of undercover policing, it's a narrative device to force characters to make statements audiences know are untrue. It's perhaps itself ironic that that kind of dramatic irony undermines suspension of disbelief. Juror #2 could do with all the help it can get. Repeated shots of the statue of Justice suggest her scales aren't hanging that securely either.

There's a McGuffin that makes a bumper crop of the seeds of civil rights violations of Se7en's librarians. There are references to true crime podcasts, and then at times it seems comrade Eastwood is pushing the notion of jury nullification. If the film has politics it loses some of them in trying to tip the scales based on moral calculus and relative worth. I'm not sure how the trolley problem works for those who could recognise a Gran Torino. I do think it is of a piece with Dirty Harry, albeit of a much reduced calibre. Both sides of the political spectrum have arguments about how the law and justice are not the same. While Callahan and his .44 were making that case one bullet at a time, Juror #2 is a lot slower, with plenty more sitting down.

The unlikely nature of all of this, including Google results that are genuinely hilarious in their specificity and accuracy, is part of the process. If you get hung up on the fact that it is all nonsense then you'll miss what amounts to a morality play. That staginess is perhaps as much a ritual towards uncovering the truth, in the same way that the robes and the seal and the oaths are. It's not magical, it's magisterial. It's also meandering.

That's from more than its overlapping chronologies. Cox is doing a power of work producing a narrative thread through overlapping revelations. Perhaps most staggering is Eastwood helming a picture that's willing to talk about failings in US law enforcement and jurisprudence, and not only in the form of civil rights or motorcycle death squads or ignoring elderly drug couriers. That's lost at times in wondering why the county wouldn't offer an exemption or postponement for medical or care commitments.

To consider the detail is something that seems to have escaped anyone involved, and I'm not sure it matters. To be able to hold one's focus might require special lenses, and I'm not sure the film is any kind of prescription. Its moral message is at best blurred, and that's if there is one. To do what is right may well require sacrifice, but Juror #2 isn't worth giving up one's time for.