"Juror #2" is an old-fashioned film

Every Clint Eastwood film is an event, especially since the San Francisco auteur surpassed the age of ninety. Born in 1930 to a steelworker father and a mother who worked for IBM, this favorite of Sergio Leone and director of over forty films - as well as the actor in more than sixty - now adds Juror #2 to his list, continuing his exploration of morality and justice that have long accompanied his narratives. Always, as in this case, with a hint of conservatism and a notable tilt towards a brand of cinema often labeled right-wing. In Juror #2, a man, James Sythe (Gabriel Basso), is accused of the femicide of his girlfriend, who died along a Georgia road. The accused claims innocence and wants a trial. It is in court that Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult) must decide, along with the rest of the jury, the young man's guilt or innocence. But as he listens to the case, his memory will start to piece together small fragments, discovering that he, too, may be involved in the young woman's death. Speak up or let a man lose his freedom? Once again, Eastwood raises more questions than answers, blindfolded like justice itself should be – though, perhaps, not entirely so.

In his personal reimagining of 12 Angry Men, a classic and surgically written work by Reginald Rose for the 1957 film directed by Sidney Lumet, Eastwood adapts Jonathan Abrams' screenplay to his own personal concept of truth – relative in its own way but inseparable from a sense of civic duty and conscience that belongs, nonetheless, to a man from another century. Not that Juror #2 is flawed. There’s a character who might be accused of a terrible crime he didn’t commit, an ex-alcoholic sober for four years, demonstrating that change is possible, and how before Lady Justice, we are all equal. But is it really so? The law should apply equally to everyone, but to everyone, truly? On one side, we have a criminal entangled in a toxic and abusive relationship, with a history of drug dealing, who left the woman he claimed to love on a dark road during a storm on the night of October 25. On the other, we have a future family man who has redeemed himself, managed to overcome his addiction to alcohol, and perhaps just made a mistake. In carefully and transparently examining his protagonist’s character, Nicholas Hoult – increasingly versatile in a cinema that clamors for him (with roles in The Order and the upcoming Nosferatu in 2024) – Clint Eastwood employs a rhetorical language of an old Republican, where no leniency exists, and only “the facts” matter. The theme of femicide is handled with a certain carelessness, while the (ex) criminal – who may not have done anything wrong – is given sympathetic consideration by the film, and the only ones who never doubt his possible innocence are the two African American characters, echoing 12 Angry Men, where the main character was a Black boy presumed guilty of murder.

It all has a hint of protectionism, and Eastwood is not seeking redemption, but rather probing into guilt, which cannot escape strict consequences where legal correctness is concerned. A well-defined identity of a director with clear tendencies, serving up Juror #2 not as a categorical statement, but as an uncompromising work that adds to his filmography a piece firmly rooted in a defined political outlook that doesn’t shy from challenging the viewer's positions. An audience mesmerized by the clarity with which Clint Eastwood expresses basic concepts – like the beauty of an imperfect U.S. judicial system that, to the characters, is the best possible – is led, by the film’s length, not to suspend judgment but to examine the story from every different and unexpected angle. Like a crime scene requiring close, thorough examination from every side, leaving nothing to chance and constantly challenging its own certainties. Juror #2 is a quintessential Eastwood, a work of the 20th century as much as its author, and one that never feels outdated in its message. It exemplifies stories finding their director, and it’s up to the audience to study and interpret them, to reflect on their own sense of justice and see what emerges.