At 94 years old, Clint Eastwood remains one of Hollywood’s powerhouses, with almost seven decades of service in the industry and more than 40 movies as director. Yet Juror #2 proves Eastwood still has more to contribute, as his latest film is his best in decades.
Juror #2 follows Nicholas Hoult as Justin Kemp, a working-class magazine writer summoned to fulfill jury duty in a homicide case. Justin has a wife at home (Zoey Deutch) in the last month of a risky pregnancy, which means the last thing he wants is to get stuck in a courtroom all day long. However, as soon as the trial begins, Justin comes to a terrifying realization: the defendant is innocent, contrary to what everyone believes. Furthermore, Justin is likely responsible for the gruesome death at the center of the trial.
Right off the bat, there’s no denying Juror #2 has a killer concept. However, a good premise is not enough to build a movie, as Eastwood showed with Hereafter. Fortunately, the director is back to his best form in Juror #2, a homage to the courtroom dramas of the 1990s that subverts expectations by offering a refreshing shift in perspective.
By now, everyone knows what to expect from an Eastwood movie, and Juror #2 doesn’t reinvent the wheel. This is a character-driven drama primarily concerned with its main character’s moral struggles. Plus, Eastwood shoots Juror #2 without much flair, allowing the story to follow a linear path and keep the focus on the emotional nuances of the people involved with the unusual trial. Thanks to Jonathan Abrams’ tight script, this is enough to set the scene for a tense and thrilling journey through the entrails of the Justice system.
The main appeal of Juror #2 is how it refuses to reduce its cast to heroic or villainous positions. On one side, we have Justin, a typical good man who cares for his wife and wants to build a loving family with his upcoming child. Yet, while driving on a stormy night, Justin hit something he thought was a deer, but might have been a woman. So, what should he do? Turn himself in and destroy his family? Or just convince the other jury members of the defendant’s innocence so he won’t be responsible for sending an innocent man to prison?
Then, there’s the defendant, James Michael Sythe (Gabriel Basso), your typical abusive boyfriend, prone to rage outbursts and with a lengthy criminal record. James is not a good person by any metric, which means it’s easy to find him guilty of murder after a lover’s quarrel, regardless of whether he did it. However, should James pay for a crime he didn’t commit, even though he has slipped through the Justice’s fingers for previous offenses? Is his life worth less than Justin’s due to his past mistakes, or is the Truth (with capital “T”) still the ultimate goal of Justice?
For its entire runtime, the movie forces the audience to absorb the emotional turmoil of these two men. It feels wrong to let James pay the price for someone else’s mistake. At the same time, it’s impossible to be impartial when it comes to Justin, a fervent believer in second chances who finds himself in an impossible spot.
What’s worse, Juror #2 confronts the viewer with the awful reality of the young Kendall Carter’s (Francesca Eastwood) ultimately death. It’s obvious her family deserves closure, and someone should be punished for her death. But no verdict can change the reality of what happened, so is it worth destroying someone else’s life, especially when the whole affair is caused by an accident with no ill intent? These are not easy questions, and Juror #2 doesn’t offer easy answers.
While Juror #2 navigates the imperfections of the U.S. justice system, Abrams’ script doesn’t take the easy out of stating that nothing works and there’s no hope. As the movie underlines, even if the system is flawed, it’s still the best we have. In fact, the story reiterates how the errors emerging from the investigation and trial processes usually derive from the lack of resources. After all, human error becomes more frequent when every team handling an investigation, prosecution, and defense is understaffed and overworked. As such, Juror #2 doubles as a cautionary tale about the need to support the people working for a fair justice system.
To hammer this point down, Juror #2 brings out the big guns and gives Chris Messina and Toni Collette delicious supporting roles. Messina is a public defendant who knows his clients are often criminals. Still, in the case of James, he’s willing to push himself to get an absolution because he wholeheartedly believes in his client’s innocence. As for Collette’s character, she’s a prosecutor running for the DA office who knows a court victory will get her the votes she needs to win the election. So, when things start to look fishy, she’s torn between her political aspirations and her oath to fight for justice. Messina and Collette are often scene-stealers, showing there’s a reason to bet on star-studded dramas.
Of course, the performance tying everything together is that of Hoult. Hoult has demonstrated remarkable range since his breakthrough role in 2002’s About a Boy. He elevates lackluster blockbusters such as Renfield and Tolkien, and shines in projects such as Equals and Mad Max: Fury Road. So, with such a diverse portfolio to draw from, Hoult builds an extremely sympathetic version of Justin, a man struggling with the hardest decisions of his life, torn between survival and a clean conscience. It’s a pleasure watching Hoult slowly unravel as he wrestles with the contradictory things his heart and brain demand of him.
That said, editing is one of the worst aspects of Juror #2. While Eastwood likes to keep things simple, the flashbacks the trial demands often lead to cuts that feel too quick and sudden for the pacing’s sake. At the same time, the movie can feel sluggish in its middle section, as Juror #2 lingers far too long on the least exciting aspect of its plot. The drama is still thrilling, but it’s easy to see there’s a better movie to be done with another pass through the cutting room.
Ultimately, Juror #2 is not up to Eastwood’s classics, such as Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby, or Gran Torino. Yet, this is the director’s best movie since at least 2014’s American Sniper – and arguably since 2009’s Invictus. Given that this might be Eastwood’s final movie, that’s a little disappointing. However, Juror #2 is an obvious improvement from the director’s most recent work, and a worthy farewell.