12 Angry Men
Play Now 12 Angry Men (1957) Movie Online
Also Known As: Twelve Angry Men
Taglines: …it explodes like twelve sticks of dynamite!
The legendary movie, the events of which unfold within one single room. It is here that the fate of the defendant, who is sentenced to a term of imprisonment for murder, which, the prosecution is sure, is an indisputable fact, will be decided. All evidence indicates that this person is guilty. So for the vast majority, the case was completed. It remained only to wait for the necessary verdict from the jury, who carefully followed the progress of the trial and intend to say the last word.
Almost all the jurors did not even doubt that they would not stay in the room for a long time, since all the evidence was there. Many have already begun to make plans for the rest of the evening, being confident that they will have a lot of free time. But as soon as it came to a vote, something unexpected happened: one of the jurors refused to admit the obvious and spoke out in favor of the defendant’s innocence. From this begins a tense struggle between everyone in the room. And the result of this trial can now be any.
A jury holdout attempts to prevent a miscarriage of justice by forcing his colleagues to reconsider the evidence.
The defense and the prosecution have rested and the jury is filing into the jury room to decide if a young man is guilty or innocent of murdering his father. What begins as an open-and-shut case of murder soon becomes a detective story that presents a succession of clues creating doubt, and a mini-drama of each of the jurors’ prejudices and preconceptions about the trial, the accused, and each other. Based on the play, all of the action takes place on the stage of the jury room.
Creators: Reginald Rose
Director: Sidney Lumet
Star Cast: Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, Ed Begley, John Fiedler, E.G. Marshall, Jack Warden, Martin Balsam
Producer (s): Henry Fonda, Reginald Rose
Cinematographer: Boris Kaufman
Music: Kenyon Hopkins
Production House: Orion-Nova Productions
Original network / Official Sites: United Artists
Release Year: 10 April 1957 (USA)
Runtime: 96 min
Genres: Crime, Drama
Country: USA,
Language: English,
Subtitles: English, Bengali
In the overheated jury room of the New York County Courthouse, a jury prepares to deliberate the case of an 18-year-old impoverished youth accused of stabbing his father to death. The judge instructs them that if there is any reasonable doubt, the jurors are to return a verdict of not guilty; if found guilty, the defendant will receive a death sentence. The verdict must be unanimous.
At first, the evidence seems convincing: a neighbor testified to witnessing the defendant stab his father from her window. Another neighbor testified that he heard the defendant threaten to kill his father and the father’s body hitting the ground, and then, through his peephole, saw the defendant run past his door. The boy has a violent past and had recently purchased a switchblade of the same type as was found at the murder scene, but claimed he lost his. The knife at the scene had been cleaned of fingerprints.
The jurors at first seem to take the decision lightly. Juror 7 in particular is anxious to catch his tickets to the baseball game. In a preliminary vote, all jurors vote guilty except Juror 8, who believes that there should be some discussion before the verdict is made. He questions the reliability of the witnesses and also throws doubt on the supposed uniqueness of the murder weapon by producing an identical switchblade from his pocket. He says he cannot vote guilty because reasonable doubt exists. With his arguments seemingly failing to convince any of the other jurors, Juror 8 suggests a secret ballot, from which he will abstain; if all the other jurors still vote guilty, he will acquiesce. The ballot reveals one not guilty vote. Juror 9 reveals that he changed his vote, respecting Juror 8’s motives and agreeing there should be more discussion.
Juror 8 argues that the noise of a passing train would have obscured the threat the second witness claimed to have overheard. Juror 5 changes his vote, as does Juror 11, who believes the defendant, had he truly killed his father, would not have returned to the crime scene several hours later to retrieve the murder weapon as it had already been cleaned of fingerprints. Juror 8 points out that people often say “I’m going to kill you” without literally meaning it.
Jurors 5, 6, and 8 further question the second witness’s story. Juror 3 is infuriated, and after a verbal argument, tries to attack Juror 8, shouting “I’ll kill him!”. Juror 8 points out that this proves his point about the defendant’s words. Jurors 2 and 6 change their votes; the jury is now evenly split.
Juror 4 doubts the defendant’s alibi, based on the boy’s inability to recall certain details regarding his alibi. Juror 8 tests Juror 4’s own memory. He is able to remember events from the previous week, with difficulty similar to the defendant. Jurors 2, 3, and 8 debate whether the defendant could have stabbed his much-taller father from a downward angle, eventually deciding it was physically possible, though awkward. Juror 5 points out that someone who knew how to use a switchblade would have instead stabbed underhand at an upwards angle.
Impatient to leave, Juror 7 changes his vote and is confronted by Juror 11; Juror 7 insists, albeit unconvincingly, that he thinks the defendant is not guilty. Jurors 1 and 12 also change their votes, leaving only three guilty votes. Juror 10 erupts in vitriol regarding the defendant’s ethnicity. The rest of the jurors, excepting Juror 4, turn their backs to him. When he bemoans that nobody is listening to him, Juror 4 claims he has and tells him to sit down and be quiet. Juror 4 declares that the woman who saw the killing from across the street stands as solid evidence. Juror 12 reverts back to a guilty vote.
After watching Juror 4 rub his nose, irritated by impressions from his eyeglasses, Juror 9 realizes that the same witness had the same impressions on her nose as well, indicating that she wore eyeglasses as well but did not wear them to court. Juror 8 reasons that the witness, who was trying to sleep when she saw the killing, was not wearing her eyeglasses when it happened and she would not have had time to put them on to get a clear view of the person who did the stabbing, making her story dubious. The remaining jurors, except Juror 3, change their vote to not guilty.
Juror 3 gives an increasingly tortured string of arguments, building on earlier remarks about his strained relationship with his own son. In a moment of rage, Juror 3 tears up a photograph of him and his son before breaking down sobbing. He mutters not guilty, making the vote unanimous. As the others leave, Juror 8 helps the distraught Juror 3 with his coat. The defendant is found not guilty off-screen and the jurors leave the courthouse. In a brief epilogue, Jurors 8 and 9 introduce each other for the first time by their names before parting.
