At 94 years old , Clint Eastwoodhas reached the old age where every new movie he attain could be his last . He ’s also lived long enough to direct several thatfeltlike his last at the meter — an intermittent provision of old - adult male drama in which the star cast himself as an aging cowboy , flight simulator , or veteran saddling up for one concluding drive . There ’s nothing so explicitly valedictory aboutJuror # 2 , Eastwood ’s latest pic and , yes , maybe his last . For one thing , he ’s not in the cinema , which forbid it from look like another swan song for the man who was The Man With No Name . What he ’s made alternatively is a tense , require legal thriller that proves that this nonagenarian caption still has plenty of storytelling vigor in him 70 years into his career .
In fact , Juror # 2is Eastwood ’s best movie in age . The game , devised by first - time screenwriter Jonathan Abrams , is improbable enough to have been pulled from the Page of a John Grisham bestseller . But Eastwood tackles it with the directness and moral clarity of one - time contemporary Sidney Lumet , who made some of the groovy courtroom drama in Hollywood history . You could even callJuror # 2a sort of 21st - century Riffian on Lumet ’s most beloved movie,12 Angry Men , that narrative of a single juryman who calmly , patiently sway eleven others that they might have some doubt and that it could be reasonable .
The Henry Fonda build here is Justin Kemp ( Nicholas Hoult ) , a polite mag author and recuperate alcoholic who would much rather be at home tending to his pregnant wife ( Zoey Deutch ) than deliberating on the evidence of a murder trial . Justin becomes the voice of reason on the jury , arguing for a short discussion before they objurgate a maybe innocent man to sprightliness in prison house . But there ’s a wrinkle in our submarine sandwich ’s grandeur , a twist on that expression . Early into the test , it dawns on him : The night the suspect ( Gabriel Basso ) followed his girlfriend out of a bar and allegedly kill her , dumping her torso in a wayside creek , Justin visited that same bar , drove down that same stretch of road , and slay what he convinced himself was a deer …
It ’s an ingeniously far - fetched premise , build on a moral quandary with real stakes . Justin , who Hoult wreak like a seasick man steeling his nerves upon every tilt of the boat , has a tricky acerate leaf to thread . To assuage his sense of right and wrong , he has to nudge his fellow juryman towards uncertainty … without implicate himself or set off a mistrial that might uncover enough to land him behind bars , far from his wife and their small fry on the way . One of the ingenious ironies of the material is that Justin is at once ideally position to preach for justice ( he has , after all , selective information that all but take reasonable incertitude ) and a direct threat to the impartiality of the process , given that the finding of fact could have an burden on his own future . Is there a expectant conflict of sake than dominate on a crimeyoumay have committed ?
Juror # 2is previous - fashioned , but never creaky . Around Hoult ’s sweaty , largely responsive functioning ( a melting pot of private culpability express mostly through his middle ) , Eastwood make a sturdy case for the timeless pleasures of the genre : the overthrow objections ; the cross - examinations ; the respectful , but sometimes heat up spar of oppose counsellor , with the two sides of the trial occupy by a typically understated Chris Messina ( as the true public shielder ) and Toni Collette ( rocking a prototypical Southernloyahaccent as the prosecutor whose tally for the district attorney task hinges on landing a conviction ) .
Meanwhile , the jury is fill out with flavorsome pilot and caricature , introduced during a snappy montage of the pick process : the chipper foreperson ( Leslie Bibb ) with a history of sit on hung panel ; the community organizer ( Cedric Yarbrough ) so convert that the defendant is bad word that he wo n’t entertain the possibility of innocence ; the x - cop ( J.K. Simmons ) who reveals his pertinent qualifications by dramatically tossing his badge onto the tabular array , and who ends up conducting his own forbidden investigating . jurywoman # 2sketches in these character with convenient motivational backstory and miniature monologue that shine a light on their biases . It ’s cornball , but really no more so than , well,12 Angry Men .
Forever the unfussy , unpretentious hairstylist , Eastwood is a good fit for thewho , what , wherenature of criminal proceedings . Like a good lawyer , he lines up the entropy and paints us a picture — at one point , by cutting together the opposing closing arguments into a individual summary of the case , with Hoult ’s mounting distraint as the worked up throughline . Not thatJuror # 2ever offers a full opinion of the truth . The flashbacks to that fatal night do n’t so much clear everything up as acclivity doubts and inquiry , as do two freestanding , subtly subjective remembrance of a shouting match outside a roadhouse . The consultation , like the jury , is led to a possible conclusion , but Eastwood does n’t confirm it .
The movie is partiallyaboutconfirmation prejudice — about how evidence is compile ( and ignored ) to support a possibility , and about how preconceived notions sometimes work our discernment of that grounds . Eastwood , who ’s spent much of his career frame a mistrustful oculus on institutions , depicts the DoJ system of rules as a virtuous idea complicated by the motif of its practitioner . Almost no one come out whole . Not Justin , seek to do some version of the right thing without take any responsibility . And not Collette ’s hard - nosed prosecutor , who terminate up wrestle with the possibility that she ’s steamroller an innocent homo partly in servicing of her political ambitions . The motion picture ’s ending are shrink , but not didactical , because Eastwood is a storyteller first , and rarely ( if ever ) a polemicist .
WithJuror # 2 , he ’s made the sort of adult - tailor , histrion - driven entertainment that ’s difficult to take for granted in our all - age blockbuster age . Unless you ’re David Zaslav , the Warner Bros. administrator who’srewarded the managing director ’s decade of loyalty to the studio by barely releasingwhat might turn out to be his final film . If this reallyisClint ’s word of farewell , it ’s an oddly meet one . While Eastwood has made his percentage of elegiac tributes to his own star great power , he ’s spent most of the last half - centurynotdwelling too much on what each fresh project means to his legacy . juryman # 2feels like a movie he could have made at any point over that time , which is ultimately why it could prove to be such an appropriate punctuation on his career — even if it ’s unspoilt enough to leave you hoping that he has n’t hang up his spurs just yet .
