In Clint Eastwood’s JUROR #2, Nicholas Hoult (THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD) plays Justin Kemp, an upstanding magazine writer in Georgia who gets summoned for jury duty. He tries to get dismissed because his wife Ally (Zoey Deutch, THE DISASTER ARTIST) is expecting soon in what he describes as “a high risk pregnancy,” but he ends up seated on the jury for a murder trial.

The prosecutor Faith Killebrew (Toni Collette, xXx: RETURN OF XANDER CAGE) and public defender Eric Resnick (Chris Messina, BIRDS OF PREY) are friends, or at least professionally friendly enough to talk to each other at the bar they both hang out in. Faith is running for district attorney and feels putting away a real scumbag like this may put her over the top; Eric insists she’s got it wrong this time, the guy is really innocent. Defendant James Sythe (Gabriel Basso, THE KINGS OF SUMMER, also unfortunately played dictator elect J.D. Vance in HILLBILLY ELEGY) is a known asshole who was seen arguing with his girlfriend Kendall (Francesca Eastwood, M.F.A.) at a bar (a decidedly different one than the lawyers go to) until she stormed off, refusing a ride home. The next day a hiker found her dead under a bridge on Old Quarry Road.

As the story is being told to the jury, Justin has a growing “oh, fuck” look on his face, and if you haven’t heard the premise of JUROR #2 you’re gonna be shocked too: he’s realizing that he was there when that fight happened. He remembers the date, because it was Ally’s due date from the last pregnancy, when they lost twins. He took his depressed, recovering alcoholic ass to the hideaway, stared down a drink but didn’t give in, then on his way home his car hit something on Old Quarry Road. He got out, couldn’t find anything in the dark, saw a deer crossing sign and hoped to God that explained it.

This could be the start of a pulpy, twisty thriller, but that’s not exactly what Clint and screenwriter Jonathan Abrams seem to have in mind. It’s more of a morality exploration. It’s pretty straight forward about what happened that night, and the suspense is about how Justin will deal with this revelation. His instincts are honorable, so he goes right to his AA sponsor/attorney friend Larry (Kiefer Sutherland in a real “shit yeah, I’ll do a Clint Eastwood movie” role) for advice on how to turn himself in. Larry tells him there’s no way anyone will believe him that he didn’t drink at the bar (he has prior DUIs) and he’ll get a long prison sentence for sure.

So instead of fessing up, Justin tries to sway the rest of the jury, who are ready to convict Sythe as soon as they start deliberating, that there’s reasonable doubt. Also difficult.

I actually have to do jury duty in a few weeks, so I watched the beginning of this grumbling “shit man, I gotta do jury duty” to myself, as well as comparing it to my previous experience (called 3 times but never on a jury). The jury selection process is obviously very streamlined for the movie – I’ll just pretend that’s how they do it in Georgia. I do appreciate that they included the detail that they make everybody watch a corny video about their duty as a juror. And one thing I found very believable is enthusiastic juror Denice (Leslie Bibb, THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN), who boasts about her experience on juries and sort of appoints herself foreperson. She ends up being one of the most thoughtful people, not the villain I assumed she’d be, but I still think it makes the point of how having a certain class background, economic situation and personality gives you more say in the jury system. The average person isn’t in a position to be excited to keep doing it.

In fact JUROR #2 argues that most jurors want to get the fuck out of there as fast as possible, whether for selfish reasons or the reality of having jobs and responsibilities to get back to. Standout juror characters include confrontational Marcus (Cedric “But Black Dynamite, I sell drugs in the community” Yarbrough) and retired Chicago PD detective Harold (J.K. Simmons, FOR LOVE OF THE GAME), who hides his background but then dramatically pulls out his badge and puts it on the table when people aren’t taking him seriously. For me it’s a problem to have a movie about the flaws in the justice system where being a cop means you’re one of the few genuinely trying to give the defendant a chance and fully investigate, but he does bring out some good points about why the police investigation was shoddy and the witness told them what they wanted him to. Also, he quite flagrantly disobeys the juror instructions by trying to do his own investigation. Finding things the detectives and overworked public defender missed, but breaking the law and tainting the trial to do it.

There’s other stuff that doesn’t ring true for me. It’s weird that nobody seems to think much of the possibility that she was hit by a car, when she was known to be walking home and found under a bridge! It comes down to everybody trusting the (also overworked) medical examiner who claims she was most likely killed by a blunt object, even though she was found smashed on top of rocks. But that’s okay, the drama isn’t as much about the details of the incident as this character trying to maneuver his way out of taking responsibility, while some of the other jurors, his wife and even the prosecutor start to seem suspicious of his behavior.

One minor complaint from a longtime Clint fan: too bad he didn’t get any of his jazz in this one, and the score by Mark Mancina (SPEED) doesn’t sound like one Clint or his son would’ve done. Oh well. Might be losing his piano hands at his age, hard to be as hands-on in that respect.

It continues to be amazing that Clint’s UNFORGIVEN is one of the definitive “old guy looking back with different eyes” movies, and now it’s thirty-two motherfucking years later and he’s still directing. I’m a fan of his even-older-man period (have you seen RICHARD JEWELL?) and it’s kind of sweet that now that he’s in his 90s and it’s easy to imagine this being his last I see people mostly being nice about it, praising the old fashioned simplicity of his filmmaking instead of making fun of it. It doesn’t have the scope of THE MULE and it’s not even close to a “holy shit, this old man is on fire” situation like Scorsese doing KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON, but it uses good performances and modest filmatism to tell a compelling and provocative story. And he makes a point of showing a real baby a bunch of times.

One reason for the forgiveness is that Clint has been cast as the underdog artist in a perceived feud with that no account rat-dick sonofabitch CEO David Zaslav (and/or somebody who works for him at Warner Bros./Discovery Channel Express), who decided to release what should be a no-brainer mid-budget hit in only 31 theaters with no plans to expand! That’s 20+ theaters fewer than years Clint has provided enormous hits and even best picture winners for the studio. He’s been doing proud by the WB logo since Zaslav was eleven years old, with movies including DIRTY HARRY, EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE, UNFORGIVEN, THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY, SPACE COWBOYS, MYSTIC RIVER, MILLION DOLLAR BABY, GRAN TORINO, AMERICAN SNIPER (which made them $547.4 million in theaters less than a decade ago) and SULLY (which made $240.8 million even more recently and it was a drama about NTSB hearings). Since Zaslav reportedly chided subordinates for releasing CRY MACHO in theaters, saying “this is show business, not show friendship,” many of us suspect this is an ongoing grudge and attempt to put artists in their place. They’re purposely losing money on the movie to make the point. (Also they leaked a story about Clint ruining takes by chewing Cheez-Its too loud.)

For me it was worth the 50 minute bus ride out to a mall in Bellevue to see JUROR #2, but I hope Zaslav’s money caves in on him while he’s on the shitter and a succession of everyone he’s ever known individually hear his cries for help and decide it’s not worth the trouble. Or that it must’ve been a deer.

Back to the movie. Some of the characters and conflicts in the jury room get almost as broad as you’d expect in something like this, but I would describe the movie overall as one with the subtlety and ambiguity that I admire in so much of Eastwood’s work. Especially in the format of the courtroom drama it’s easy for a movie to lay it on thick about who’s right and wrong, and what to think about it. I think by the end (SPOILERS) Justin begins to unravel a little, and I believe that Eastwood considers him dishonorable for not owning up to his actions. I don’t buy, and suspect Clint doesn’t buy, the argument that James is a bad person and criminal who deserves prison for something else he might’ve done more than good person Justin deserves to be taken from his wife and baby for making a mistake. But it doesn’t come across as a completely unreasonable argument. You see him with Ally at the end, you feel the walls closing in on him, but you don’t want her to have to deal with that. I can understand why he makes those justifications to himself. I’d like to think I wouldn’t, but I’m really not sure.

Of course there’s a huge hypocrisy there. His argument for why he’s a good person is that he went to AA and turned his life around. Inherent in that is the possibility that James could also turn his life around. And maybe do it without accidentally running anybody over.

This is the first screenplay credit for Jonathan Abrams (though he was an associate producer on ESCAPE PLAN). As with all Clint movies I assume it wasn’t written or altered for him, and yet I find myself reading a million things into what he could be saying with it. He has to have been interested in its themes of guilt and accountability in modern society. Especially in Clint’s world of celebrities, so many people have some bad thing they did or stupid thing they said long ago, and they thought nothing of it at the time or got away with it and forgot about it but suddenly it comes up again. And maybe they really did improve themselves since then, or become parents and family men and shit, and maybe it’s really not worth dredging up or ruining lives at this point, depending on how bad the thing is. I came out of JUROR #2 with a strong sense that you gotta own up anyway. That might just be my own compass and response to the movie, or it might be Clint’s intense, judging glare coming through his camera. I’m really not sure, and I like that.

It works in other ways too. I’m not saying Clint had this in mind at all, but this “I didn’t know it but I wronged somebody” situation almost fits as a metaphor for historical wrongs – the legacies of colonization, slavery, segregation, or other forms of injustice, maybe smaller ones, maybe ones you weren’t enlightened enough to know about before, or see that you benefited from. Well, now you know. Is there something we should do to bring justice now, or are we unwilling to do it because of the comfortable status quo we got going on the back of not having addressed these things earlier?

These are complicated questions with uncomfortable answers. That’s why I think it’s kind of amazing that they come out of what in other ways is a very basic court room drama. Obviously my favorite Clint-directed movies are the more actiony ones where he also stars, but this is a good example of why his dramas are always worth watching too. When he’s talked politics publicly they’ve been very different from mine, and there are a few terrible stories about his personal life, but in his art he almost always expresses a thoughtfulness and sense of humanity that really speaks to me. This one is kind of the flip side to RICHARD JEWELL and SULLY, movies about people being blamed for things they actually didn’t do. I think JUROR #2 has hope for people doing the right thing, but asks them to make that decision for themselves.