Review: 12 Angry Men (1957)

Title: 12 Angry Men
Year: 1957
Starring: Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, E.G. Marshall, Ed Begley, Joseph Sweeney, George Voskovec
Genre: Drama
MPAA: N/A (Probably G)
Kids-In-Mind.com: N/A (approx. 0.1.1)
My Rating: 9.6
IMDb Rating: 8.9 (Top 250: #7)

Synopsis: 12 jurors in a murder case deliberate over the course of 90 minutes. The vote must be unanimous either way, and if a verdict of guilty is reached, the death penalty is mandatory. In a preliminary vote, they vote 11-1 to convict with Juror #8 (Fonda) the lone dissenter. As he begins to explain the reasonable doubt he finds in the case, the jurors begin to change their votes one by one. He and his two main allies in convincing the rest to acquit, Juror #9 and Juror #11 (Sweeney and Voskovec) eventually find enough loopholes in the prosecution's case to convince the three most opposed, Juror #3, Juror #4, and Juror #10 (Cobb, Marshall, and Begley) to vote to acquit.

My Take: Wow. This film is brilliant. The plot itself is quite entertaining and self-sustaining, but the way it makes light of just how deep in argument these twelve men can get with one another without one knowing any other at all is amazing. Classics like this are often remade, but this one doesn't need to be. I particularly enjoyed the performances of Cobb, Marshall, and Voskovec. Cobb's performance as a narcissistic, arrogant jerk who refuses to change his mind for anything is well done, as the viewer can see the signs of his cracking at the end of the film. Marshall's performance as an intellectual, rigid man standing by his last story until it's found to have a loophole at the end is well-done. Voskovec does well as an immigrant proud of his citizenship and the American justice system, standing up to Juror #7's indifference to the case. This is a must-watch.

Concerning the rating: The 9.6 puts this film fourth out of 147 rated. Despite its having been made prior to the MPAA rating system, I have assigned it a G rating for the purposes of my statistics. This becomes the highest-rated G-rated film on my list, beating out the previous #1 G-rated, Monsters, Inc. (2001), which has a rating of 8.8.

In queue: The Wrestler (2008), Fight Club (1999), Pulp Fiction (1994)

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