Nicholas Hoult wrestles with a devastating secret as a murder trial hangs in the balance.
By James Verniere/Boston Movie News
In the courtroom drama “Juror #2,” director Clint Eastwood presents a moral dilemma: What if a juror knows something that may free a man almost certain to be convicted of murder? But what if that knowledge, if made public, will also destroy the juror and his family?
Pile on the fact that the juror, whose name is Justin Kemp (Englishman Nicholas Hoult, “Mad Max: Fury Road”) is a recovering alcoholic and Georgia feature writer whose loving and supportive wife Allison (Zoey Deutch) is about to give birth about a year after she suffered a devastating miscarriage.
The situation is indeed fraught for Justin and Allison and made worse when Justin is called into jury duty in a courthouse beneath a gilded dome and statue of Justice out front. The prosecutor is district attorney hopeful Faith Killebrew (the redoubtable Toni Collette), who is certain the defendant is guilty because of his history of violence. The screenplay by Jonathan A. Abrams, whose previous credit is the Huey Lewis and the News stage musical “The Heart of Rock and Roll,” repeatedly flashes back to the evening of the alleged murder. We see the defendant, the angry, bearded, and burly James Michael Sythe (Gabriel Basso, “Hillbilly Elegy”), in a bar named Rowdy’s Hideaway (shades of Eastwood’s “Rawhide” trusty ramrod Rowdy Yates) with his late girlfriend Kendall Carter (Francesca Eastwood). The two get into a fight at the bar. A glass breaks. The fight continues outside in a torrential downpour in the parking lot. She leaves on foot. Sythe can be seen following her. The next day, a hiker finds Kendall’s body, her skull crushed, on the rocks beneath a small bridge. We also see in the flashback that Justin was looking distressed at the bar that night. Everyone believes that Sythe murdered Kendall. An old man who lives in a trailer near the bridge even identifies Sythe as a suspicious man in a car that he saw on the bridge on the stormy night of the alleged murder.
Unlike the recent Cedric Kahn courtroom drama “The Goldman Case” with its thrilling lead performance by Arieh Worthalter, “Juror #2 struck me as strictly formulaic. Even Sythe’s defense attorney, Eric Resnick (Chris Messina), who has drinks with his friendly rival Killebrew after their day in court, believes Sythe may be guilty. But he wants to give his client the best possible defense.
At an AA meeting, Justin speaks with a lawyer and fellow addict named Larry Lasker (Keifer Sutherland). Again, we see the fight between Sythe and Kendall. She hits him in the parking lot. (On a distracting note, Eastwood’s daughter Franscesa was arrested recently in Beverly Hills on suspicion of domestic violence.) The tension rises as we realize the possible trouble Justin might be in. A retired cop in the jury named Harold (Academy Award winner J.K. Simmons in a small role), who owns a flower shop called, lamentably, Life Rose On, believes that the case may be a hit-and-run and decides to investigate on his own, which is against the rules. Justin follows him in the car he has been driving to the courthouse every day and the one he was driving on the night of Kendall’s death.
Hoult and Deutch are sympathetic as the young couple who suffered a great loss and are facing an imminent, hopefully, redemptive birth. The truth would further destroy them. In a painfully too-cute aside, Justin and Allison dress as the couple from “American Gothic” to greet children at their door for Halloween. Really? Harold gets his hands on vehicle repair records that might implicate Justin. Marcus (Cedric Yarbrough), a Black man on the jury, has a deep voice and a piercing gaze and is angrily certain that Sythe is guilty. Many of the other jurors understandably just want to go home.
As courtroom dramas go, “Juror #2” is not bad. It has some Hitchcockian elements and sometimes evokes the NYC-set Sidney Lumet 1957 classic “12 Angry Men.” What makes “Juror #2” stand out is that it is the latest film from 94-year-old Eastwood, whose unprecedented career has been a wonder to behold.
‘Juror #2’
Rating: PG-13 for some violent images and strong language.
Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette, Zoey Deutch, Chris Messina
Director: Clint Eastwood
Writer: Jonathan A. Abrams
Running Time: 113 minutes
Where to Watch: AMC Boston Common
Grade: B
Boston Movie News 