I always love to see a thriller with a good hook in theatres and Juror #2 had me intrigued from the basic premise alone. Clint Eastwood may be inconsistent as a director but he's made so many certified classics that any movie he directs deserves at least some attention. With this being his supposedly final film I had to believe it was going to be something special and if this truly is it for him he definitely ended on a high note.
The script does such a good job at putting you in the head space of this main character and it left me with conflicted feelings in all of the right ways. Nicholas Hoult is terrific in a role that would demand a lot of any actor and his few scenes with Zoe Deutch really endeared me to that character. I love a good courtroom drama and the film managed to be a very successful one by making good use of its hook to ring every bit of tension out of those scenes. I was constantly intrigued to see where things would end up and it left me with one of the best questions you can have after any movie and that is what would I do on the same situation?
The script has a lot to say about the justice system and it's inherent flaws and I was very glad that the film didn't end on a stereotypically happy note but rather on a fairly bittersweet one which left as conflicted as everything else had up until then. The commentary isn't always as deep as it attempts to be however with a lot of observations that ended up feeling fairly surface level. A lot of that comes down to the supporting cast in particular the other jurors who all ended up feeling very one note with very little depth. They felt like conduits to deliver commentary rather than well rounded characters and their dialogue started to feel hokey to me very quickly.
I also wish the overall technical craft was a little bit stronger. Eastwood is a legend for a reason but I just wish he did more interesting things behind the camera here. The way in which the central dilemma is revealed is fairly underwhelming and there were portions of the second act that began to drag for me because of how repetitive a lot of the courtroom scenes could be. But there's nothing about it that offended me, it's fantastically edited with a really good score but I just couldn't help but wonder what a director with a bit more of a distinctive visual style could've done with this material.
Juror #2 was exactly what I wanted it to be and I think it's a travesty that Warner Bros doesn't have any interest in pushing it properly. It's constantly riveting and intriguing because it always made the most out of its premise. I wish the commentary was deeper and the technical craft were a bit stronger but it's nice to see a director of Eastwood's calibre go out on something as quiet and meditative as this. We don't get movie like this enough nowadays and it deserves so much better than how Warner Bros has treated it.
