Juror #2
The Film
Juror #2 is a 2024 American legal thriller film co-produced and directed by Clint Eastwood and written by Jonathan Abrams.
The film stars Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette, J. K. Simmons, and Kiefer Sutherland. In the film, a man serving on the jury of a high-profile murder trial realizes that he may be responsible for the victim's death.
The film was well received by audiences, and garnered very positive reviews from critics; it was named one of the Top 10 Films of 2024 by the National Board of Review.
Production
It was announced in April 2023 that filmmaker Clint Eastwood had set the project as his next film, with Nicholas Hoult and Toni Collette in negotiations to star. They were confirmed the following month, with Zoey Deutch and Kiefer Sutherland also joining the cast, and Gabriel Basso entering negotiations for a role.
In June, Leslie Bibb was added to the cast. In November, Chris Messina joined the cast while Basso was confirmed. J. K. Simmons, Amy Aquino, Adrienne C. Moore, Cedric Yarbrough, Chikako Fukuyama, Onix Serrano and Francesca Eastwood were added in December.
Collette and Hoult reunited 22 years after playing mother and son in About a Boy (2002). This was the second time working together for Deutch and Hoult, after the film Rebel in the Rye (2017).
Production began in June 2023, when Eastwood was 93 years old, with filming locations including Savannah, Georgia, and Los Angeles, before it was suspended in July due to the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike.
Production resumed in November upon the conclusion of the strike. Post-production had wrapped by April 2024. Mark Mancina composed the score for the film; he previously worked on Eastwood's Cry Macho (2021).
Critical Response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 93% of 175 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "A legal thriller with a heavy conscience, Juror #2 is less a summation of Clint Eastwood's storied directorial career than another terrific reminder of his knack for plain-spoken drama." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 72 out of 100, based on 37 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.
Vulture's Bilge Ebiri commented that Eastwood's drama is a film "about how the system can fail even as everybody tries their best". He added that Eastwood's perspective is mirrored by his "own growing cynicism about the effectiveness of [government and legal] institutions".
Several critics noted that Juror #2 did not fit a traditional political narrative. IndieWire's Christian Zilko called the film "one of the best studio films of 2024", writing that while the film "introduces a reverence for law, order, and due process that seems to suit a lifelong conservative, it eventually reveals a more apolitical patriotism that's uniquely Eastwoodian".
The New Yorker's Richard Brody agreed that while Eastwood is "one of the most distinctive and original political filmmakers ... the politics [the film] brings to life is essentially, and forcefully, anti-political ... Eastwood treats celebrity as a diabolical tool and sees the gap between publicity and reality as a trap door to hell".
The Neue Zürcher Zeitung commented that Juror #2 could be read as a parable of America's political divide, in which Sythe, a representative of Donald Trump's blue-collar voting base, is being judged by Kemp, a representative of the progressive elite, who realizes he may have been blind to his own offences.
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Cast
- Nicholas Hoult as Justin Kemp, a journalist called up for jury duty
-Toni Collette as Faith Killebrew, the Assistant District Attorney prosecuting
the Carter case
-J. K. Simmons as Harold, a former homicide detective and juror
-Chris Messina as Eric Resnick, the public defender who represents Sythe
-Gabriel Basso as James Michael Sythe, the suspect
-Zoey Deutch as Allison Crewson, Kemp's wife and a local schoolteacher
-Cedric Yarbrough as Marcus, a juror
-Leslie Bibb as Denice Aldworth, the jury foreperson
-Kiefer Sutherland as Larry Lasker, a lawyer and Kemp's Alcoholics Anonymous
sponsor
-Amy Aquino as Judge Thelma Hollub (nameplate prop, throughout the film,
says "Thelma Stewart")
-Adrienne C. Moore as Yolanda, a juror