- A more accurate description of the initial state of affairs might have been eleven overconfident men and one undecided. This is the jury that is nearly ready to convict a boy of murdering his own father, but juror #8 (Henry Fonda) urges them to consider the case one last time before handing down judgment. Number 8 isn't so much convinced of the boy's innocence as he is worried that a jury shouldn't "send a boy off to die without talking about it first." He's initially the lone voice of hesitation, as the other jurors blithely remind him with disapproving stares and head-shaking. It's a terribly hot day, and tempers are starting to flare.
- The discussion begins as each juror reviews why they think the boy is guilty. Some reasons are better than others, but it is clear that the jurors have carried a lot of emotional and personal baggage into the proceedings. Take, for example, juror #10 (Ed Begley) who immediately claims that the boy's unspecified ethnic group consists of a bunch of "born liars" and later takes this idea even further. A more insidious prejudice is that of juror #3 (the excellent Lee J. Cobb) who only gradually reveals that his own troubled relationship with his son has biased him against the defendant. The rest of the jury is a similarly exaggerated mix of personality types. The timid juror #2 (John Fiedler) is likely to agree with any crowd, while juror #4 (E. G. Marshall) overestimates the power of memory. Juror #7 (Jack Warden) is thinking mostly about that evening's ballgame, while Juror #12 (Robert Webber) is naturally superficial.
- What makes 12 Angry Men interesting is not the plot itself, which could have been lifted from a good Perry Mason, but rather how its fascinating characters change their minds. Rarely are movie audiences given the chance to watch characters develop significantly, but here we get the chance to see eleven different people gradually reconsider their positions for eleven different reasons. The elderly juror #9 (Joseph Sweeney) empathetically realizes that an older witness may have fabricated his testimony just to get attention. Juror #5 (Jack Klugman) knows enough about knife fights to suspect that the boy would not have stabbed downward. Juror #4 only revises his opinion when his own memory proves to be as fallible as that of the defendant. Although the jurors are identified with numbers, these are real people who can't leave their personalities and prejudices at the courtroom door. As the final lines of the film remind us, the numbered jurors have real names, too.
- Besides being a classic courtroom (or post-courtroom) drama, 12 Angry Men is also one of the best examples of the "close quarters" style of filming. Most of the action takes place in a claustrophobic jury room on one of the hottest days of the year. The jurors are sweating, the fan is malfunctioning, and you can practically feel the pressure building as the day wears on. This stifling environment ratchets up the already high level of suspense of a murder trial and makes each new tallying of the votes even more exciting. Who would have thought that a dozen men sitting around talking and yelling for an hour and a half could be so riveting? I suppose nobody handles the madness of crowds better than Sidney Lumet, and that's true even for this crowd of twelve.
- This was Sidney Lumet's first feature-length film.
