The Curious Case Of 'Juror No. 2'
#297: "Juror No. 2," "Here," "Heretic," "Dirty Harry," "Broken City"
Edition 297:
Hey movie lovers!
This week: Clint Eastwood and Robert Zemeckis are the latest directors out to prove the old guys still got it, to varying levels of success. Plus evil Hugh Grant! And my ongoing obsession with crime movies, explained. In this week’s “Trailer Watch,” Jason Bateman plays an airport terrorist.
Juror No. 2
There’s a big kerfuffle going on in Hollywood right now about why Juror No. 2, with good critical and awards buzz plus strong initial box office returns on a per-screen average, is only available in less than 20 theaters with no immediate plan to expand its footprint. Want to see this movie? Tough luck.
(I use the word “kerfuffle” because it’s the sort of thing that makes a couple dozen people who work in the industry angry and the rest of the general public doesn’t really care, as long as they can watch the movie a few weeks from now on Max.)
But I think the release quirkiness is important because it speaks to the larger narrative of this movie, which is Warner Bros. and just about everyone else doubting whether a 94-year-old Clint Eastwood still has it in him to make a great movie. Apparently the studio lost its shirt on 2021’s Cry Macho, which wasn’t very good (but 2019’s Richard Jewell was and 2018’s The Mule was a modest hit). Chalk it up to the latest very public misstep from the David Zaslav administration at Warners.
The point stands that with this movie, surely Clint’s last directorial effort (though I think I’ve said that three or four times now), there was no guarantee he would go out with a bang.
No bang, it turns out, but there is a dead woman. Our poor protagonist sap, played by a Clint stand-in Nicholas Hoult, tall with similar fierce blue eyes but not nearly the iron will of his nonagenarian predecessor, gets called for jury duty on the case. He’s a softer, gentler hero, in fact so comically well-behaved at the beginning of the movie that one immediate suspects something must be wrong.
Turns out, he may or may not be responsible for the death of the woman, which puts him in an awkward-if-not-compromising position of deciding the fate of her defendant boyfriend.
So the table is set for a movie that is quite explicitly the plot of 12 Angry Men, if one of the jury members was (maybe) the murderer. A great setup! The group argues and deliberates over not only the facts of the case but the meaning of innocence and guilt. Eastwood’s cache means the cast is stacked with talent, from district attorney Toni Collette to jurors J.K. Simmons and Leslie Bibb to lawyer Keifer Sutherland to pregnant wife Zoey Deutch.
The premise and the cast are enough to propel the straight ahead plot all the way to its more ambiguous conclusion. Amazingly, and to the movie’s great credit, when the climactic verdict is read out I had absolutely no inkling of which direction it was going to go, proof that the movie’s narrative tension holds. And in some ways, the movie hides behind its well-worn construction in order to conceal its true ideas.
Of course, as with all of latter day Eastwood films, the deeper examination is about whether our protagonist (regardless of whether he’s played by Eastwood or an Eastwood proxy) is a “good man,” or what that even means. I’ve heard and read some smart analysis on the surprising depth of this movie and what it asks of its audience by not answering that question. Especially given Eastwood’s political history, it makes me appreciate what it was bringing to the table even more.
Is it the best movie of the year? No, but I can say with some certainty that’s it’s the best movie ever made by a 94 year old. And were it given a fair shot by Warners, I think it could’ve been a surprise hit both with audiences and awards shows. When it comes to Max, you definitely ought to give it a try.
Something New
Here (Theaters): The Boomers are getting old, folks! 72-year-old Robert Zemeckis was one of the most reliable hitmakers of the 20th century — Back To The Future, Forrest Gump, Cast Away — but in recent years he’s been far more obsessed with technological gimmicks (like The Polar Express or Welcome To Marwen) and reflecting on his life and how the world has changed across the decades.
In those two veins, Here might be his boldest experiment yet, an entire movie shot from a fixed camera angle, across literally thousands of years, a window into one corner of the world. It reunites him with Forrest Gump stars Tom Hanks (a frequent Zemeckis collaborator) and Robin Wright, the central figures in the sprawling tale who are digitally aged and de-aged to play everything from 18 year olds to octogenarians.
The message is not so subtle. Hanks and Wright, as proxies for the Boomer generation, did not fulfill the entirety of the big plans and promises they made while they were young. And yet, just as with the generations before and after them, life goes on blissfully ignorant of their struggle.
Unfortunately, the fractured, anecdotal structure makes it really difficult for any one story thread to feel complete or satisfying, and I don’t think anything in the storytelling is able to supersede the camera gimmick. Plus…I’ll be honest, the AI de-aging technology still kind of creeps me out, especially because the voices and the way the characters move still appear to come from older performers.
The movie plays best as kind of a life-stage karaoke, filled with truckloads of Zemeckis’ sentimental fairy dust, and I do think some of the moments would have hit with a lot more resonance for me had I been able to relate to more of the things being shown. Alas, for me it wasn’t much more than an interesting but failed experiment.
Heretic (Theaters): Hugh Grant has spent the last few years taking on roles that are as far from his “charming romantic lead” type as possible, and has proven quite adept at playing smarmy, diabolical villains (The Gentlemen is an all-timer, but “The Undoing,” Dungeons & Dragons and a literal Oompa Loompa in Wonka come to mind).
This time around he plays a creepy old man who invites two Mormon missionaries into his home under the pretense that he’d be interested in conversion. Obvious to anyone who’s ever seen a horror movie before, he has other intentions.
But this movie is only interested in horror so far as it allows filmmakers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods to tell the story they’re interested in, which is an examination of world religions and the nature of faith in some unknown entity. These two guys are the screenwriters behind A Quiet Place, so they know how to craft a thriller (they also wrote 65, so maybe not).
The movie is mostly of a lot of talking, exchanging ideas and theories and wild anecdotes (at one point, Grant whips out a Jar Jar Binks impression). It’s hard to imagine the movie working as well as it does without Grant chewing up so much scenery, going for it 110% with each line delivery.
As it happens, the girls must descend through a Dante’s Inferno-esque rings of hell situation in order to escape, with each new area unlocking deeper horrors. I shudder to think anyone might walk away believing that Grant’s heretic (aha the title!) has some good ideas or made some good points, but Beck and Woods do a good job of leaving each side open to interpretation.
Something Old
Dirty Harry (1971, Max): I’ll be the first to admit I’m not fully up on my Clint Eastwood back catalog, and this week was the first time I watched this 1971 classic that gave us the hall of fame movie moment where Clint’s San Francisco homicide detective raises a .44 magnum at a bank robber and tells him to ask himself, “Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?”
In case you need to be reminded why Clint was the biggest movie star in the world once upon a time, this is one of those megawatt charisma performances that’s once in a generation.
This was a pre-Se7en world, before movies became obsessed with serial killers who wrote in cryptic journals and played psychological mind games. There’s no real mystery in this cat-and-mouse chase, but the movie has an incredible amount of swagger and style for the early 70s, which makes each scene unbelievably watchable. Make no mistake — it may not be set in the old west, but it’s basically a western.
Aside from the horribly outdated views on violent policing and vigilante justice (“Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?”), the movie looks better than just about anything released today. Now that I’ve seen it I can confirm it’s one of those classics you really have to see if you call yourself a movie fan.
Something To Stream
Broken City (Amazon Prime): It’s almost comical how any time I’m scrolling through a streaming service, I’m attracted like a moth to flame to any movie like this one — all I need to see is crime, investigation, a little mystery, a few plot twists, maybe some corrupt politicians, some black mail, and throw in a few recognizable actors? Sure, I’m not doing anything for the next two hours. Put it on.
I’d never even heard of this movie starring Mark Wahlberg as a cop-turned-PI who gets hired by NYC’s mayor, played by Russell Crowe, to investigate the infidelity of his wife, played by Catherine Zeta-Jones. That’s star power, even before you add in Kyle Chandler, Jeffrey Wright and Barry Pepper around the periphery, and the director of The Book of Eli Allen Hughes behind the camera.
There’s probably a reason for that anonymity. Is this the best version of this kind of story? Heck no. Probably not even top 50. But you better believe I’ve seen them all, and for me at least, any competent entry into this genre has a baseline of like seven out of 10. This one sufficiently scratched that itch for me and could for you also.
Trailer Watch: Carry-On
Remember that Shia LaBeouf movie Eagle Eye? What if we re-did that premise, but set it on Christmas Eve in an airport, and made the psycho on the other end Jason Bateman?! Say no more, I’m in. Let’s not forget that Taron Edgerton, who stars here as a heroic TSA agent, used to be the lead of the Kingsmen movies. He can do action movies. This movie is about as straightforward as they come, and if executed well, could be better off for it. I’m definitely going to be making time for it.