Juror #2 World Premiere TCL Chinese Theatre and Reviews

Juror #2 World Premiere TCL Chinese Theatre

I don’t know what to read into the fact the there was one noticeable absentee from the World Premiere of Juror #2 on Sunday night – the director himself, Clint Eastwood. It might just be that Clint simply isn’t up to it anymore (he never really was one for these events) or perhaps it was a political message, a swift kick in the backside of the Warner Brothers suits who have chosen to effectively sweep the movie under the carpet? 

It’s a pitiful attitude by Warner Brothers, who have handled the whole affair as if it were some sort of unwanted irritation and an inconvenience in their Calander. 

Regardless of this, the fans I know will continue to support and champion the movie, clasping it with both hands. perhaps as a last-ditch reminder of a good, old fashioned, human drama.     

I’ve gathered together some of the feedback here as well as some general reviews from various sources.

‘Juror #2’ Review: Nicholas Hoult and Toni Collette Excel in Clint Eastwood’s Acerbic, Ambivalent Courtroom Drama

The AFI Fest premiere also stars J.K. Simmons, Kiefer Sutherland and Zoey Deutch in the story of a writer who finds the details of a murder case to hit disturbingly close to home. By Justin Lowe. The Hollywood Reporter:

Anyone who has served on a jury, or even been summoned to participate in jury selection, can recall the inevitable tension that direct participation in the justice system can provoke. Countless others might recognize the distinct hallmarks of the experience from an abundance of movies and TV episodes: the bailiff’s courtroom call to order, the jury selection process and the unpredictable uncertainties of the trial process.

But while the often-static setting of Juror #2, Clint Eastwood’s latest feature, will no doubt feel familiar, the narrative twists of Jonathan Abrams’ agile script add fresh perspective to the courtroom drama. Eastwood’s long list of awards and near-incomparable professional longevity will certainly stir interest in Warner Bros.’ Nov. 1 bow, even if the film itself remains a rather understated addition to the Oscar winner’s considerable career.

Debuting his newest releases at AFI Fest has become something of a ritual for the 94-year-old multi-hyphenate, who previously presented the Matt Damon sports drama Invictus; J. Edgar, starring Leonardo DiCaprio; Oscar nominee American Sniper with Bradley Cooper; and most recently, 2019’s Richard Jewell at the annual event. Although he wasn’t present at Juror #2’s world premiere, Eastwood’s palpable legacy inevitably informs the account of recovering alcoholic Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult), a staff writer for a Savannah, Georgia magazine, who gets summoned for jury duty.

Justin has turned his life around since meeting and marrying Allison (Zoey Deutch) four years earlier, and the couple are especially anxious for the arrival of their new baby after a miscarriage the year prior. The anticipation is a constant source of distraction as he’s selected to serve on a high-profile murder trial: Faith Killebrew (Toni Collette), a county prosecutor currently campaigning for district attorney, has charged James Sythe (Gabriel Basso) with malice murder in the death of his girlfriend Kendall Carter (Francesca Eastwood) — an offense that could land him in prison for life without parole.

As the details of the case emerge during the hearing, Justin finds the account to sound strangely familiar. Sythe is accused of killing Carter the previous year, allegedly by bludgeoning her to death along a dark, rainy rural roadside after a confrontation at a bar, though authorities have never recovered the weapon. The incident is alleged to have occurred at exact same location, and on the exact same date, where Justin hit a deer in his Toyota 4Runner after leaving the very same bar where Sythe and Carter had been arguing. Justin claims he wasn’t drinking at the time, despite feeling distraught over Allison’s miscarriage. But recounting the events of that night to supportive attorney Larry Lasker (Kiefer Sutherland), Justin speculates: “Maybe I didn’t hit a deer.”

The scenes that comprise the jury deliberations bear perhaps too much resemblance to Sydney Lumet’s 1957 classic 12 Angry Men, with only Justin initially opposed to conviction. As he strives to convince the other group that reasonable doubt remains regarding Sythe’s guilt, he’s driving a risky personal agenda as well. His adamant opposition to conviction begins to raise questions among fellow jurors, who nonetheless agree that the case against Sythe isn’t as clear-cut as Killebrew contended during the trial.

Eastwood, who’s demonstrated a career-long preoccupation with society’s struggle over conflicting morals, mostly focuses on Justin’s moral dilemma rather than his legal precarity. Repeatedly appealing to the audience with the implied rhetorical question, “What would you do?” the filmmakers successfully distract from the issues that a full-blown procedural approach would be forced to confront. It’s an effective, if ultimately less satisfying, approach that misleads the audience but successfully avoids outright betrayal.

The tactic is largely successful due to the strengths of the cast and the familiarity of the confusion following an auto accident. Hoult’s Justin suffers from repeated flashbacks throughout the trial that compound the trauma of the incident, which the actor conveys with an understated but increasingly frayed restraint. Meanwhile, as Killebrew, who gradually emerges as the narrative’s antagonist, begins to see her reputation and political career hinging on the outcome of the case, Collette incrementally dials up the character’s intensity.

As with many Eastwood pictures, an outstanding supporting cast underlines the lead performances, from Chris Messina’s determined public defender advocating for Basso’s bewildered client, to J.K. Simmons as an excused juror with a hidden agenda.

Even the smaller roles are deftly etched, including Cedric Yarbrough, Adrienne C. Moore and Leslie Bibb as contrarian jury members and a piquantly prickly Amy Aquino as the trial judge — although an underused Deutch gets short shrift as Justin’s long-suffering spouse.

Eastwood’s long-time team of collaborators, including editor Joel Cox, cinematographer Yves Bélanger and production designer Ron Reiss, along with producers Tim Moore and Jessica Meier, have ably contributed to crafting a distinctive picture in the classic Hollywood dramatic style. Eastwood sometimes relies excessively on the familiar technique of close-ups to imply his characters’ inner conflicts. But actors of this caliber just as easily reveal adequate emotion with a tapping foot or twitching finger as they do another tight shot on their facial features.

Warner Bros. Discovery originally planned Juror #2 for streaming before the company switched the title to a PG-13 theatrical release. While this will qualify the feature for Academy Awards consideration, it will reportedly only receive a limited run of fewer than 50 theaters nationwide.

Nonetheless, the timing of Juror #2‘s release thrusts it directly into the year’s awards conversation and, as ever, Eastwood will remain a strong contender for consideration.

‘Juror No. 2’ Review: Clint Eastwood’s Modest Moral Drama Gets Us Thinking Outside the (Jury) Box by Peter Debruge, Variety

Nicholas Hoult plays a guilty man tapped to judge someone else for his own mistake in Eastwood's unlikely yet engaging courtroom drama. 

If you think jury duty’s a drag, consider how much worse sitting in judgment of others could be if, on the first day of the trial, you were to discover the defendant’s been accused of a terrible crime for which you were in fact the one responsible. That’s the hook of Clint Eastwood’s latest — and some fear last — feature, “Juror No. 2,” a slightly preposterous but thoroughly engaging extension of the 94-year-old filmmaker’s career-long fascination with guilt, justice and the limitations of the law.

In movies where Eastwood acts, guns go a long way to resolve problems the system can’t. But the director does not appear in “Juror No. 2,” a moral-minded courtroom drama in which Nicholas Hoult plays the lone holdout in a murder trial. The film may open on a note of idealism, but it quickly turns cynical as Hoult’s character, “perfect” husband and upstanding citizen Justin Kemp, who honors his jury summons, even though he’d rather be home with his pregnant wife Ally (Zoey Deutch).

Justin asks to be excused, but is selected anyway, rounding out a dozen folks who’d rather be doing anything other than their civic duty. The whole process is “wasting our time,” and “my kids need me,” complain Justin’s fellow jurors, whereas he has an entirely different set of reasons for wanting to reach the right verdict.

As soon as prosecuting attorney Faith Killebrew (Toni Collette) describes the murder — a clear-cut case of domestic violence in her opinion— Justin realizes that he was there at the roadside bar on the night in question. More troubling still, he starts to wonder whether the deer he hit on the way home might not have been a deer at all, but the victim, Kendall Carter (Francesca Eastwood).

What are the odds? Best not to wonder. You’re either on board with the premise or you’re not in a film that takes the resulting predicament seriously, inviting audiences to ponder what they’d do in Justin’s shoes. To complicate matters, the expectant father is a recovering alcoholic, and his sponsor (Kiefer Sutherland) — who also happens to be a lawyer — advises him that if he were to come forward, no one would believe he’d been sober on the night in question.

It’s no coincidence the film is set in Georgia, where first-degree vehicular homicide is treated as a felony. The location gives Collette (and no one else in the cast) a chance to do a thick Southern accent, as her character alternates between court and the campaign trail. Faith is running for district attorney on a tough-on-domestic-abuse platform, and this case could push her to victory, which makes the truth as inconvenient for her as it is for Justin. (On the opposite side, Chris Messina plays the desperate-sounding public defender.)

Once the trial wraps and deliberations begin, Eastwood seems to be counting on our having seen “12 Angry Men,” dangling the possibility that Justin could sway the rest of the jury to acquit — or else nudge them toward a guilty verdict, letting Kendall’s boyfriend, James Sythe (Gabriel Basso), take the fall. But Jonathan Abrams’ script has a few twists up its sleeve, which seem to fit Eastwood’s more skeptical view of the legal process.

Early on, Justin gives a short Frank Capra-worthy speech about how the defendant deserves the benefit of the doubt, but it’s clear that’s Justin’s conscience talking. Ten of the jurors are ready to convict, while Justin finds an ally in Harold (J.K. Simmons), a former police detective whose gut tells him the accused is innocent.

The trouble with swaying the others, Justin realizes, is that they’re operating on prejudices — which amounts to a pretty damning critique of the “peer” system by which juries operate. Like both the police and the prosecutor, these fictional civilians are susceptible to bias, considering only the evidence that supports their hastily reached conclusions. Of course, everything could be resolved quite quickly if Justin came clean.

Here, I was reminded of a little-seen but utterly remarkable silent film from director John M. Stahl called “The Woman Under Oath,” which challenges the sexist notion that women might be too emotional or irrational to serve on juries (the progressive drama was released in 1919, nearly two decades before New York granted the responsibility to women). In the film, 11 men are ready to convict, while the state’s first female juror insists the defendant is innocent — and she should know! In the end, she reveals that she was the killer, justifying her actions to the jury, who exonerate the suspect while keeping her secret.

That film bears mentioning for two reasons: First, “The Woman Under Oath” deserves to be rediscovered, and second, there’s nothing like putting the culprit on the jury to upend the process. In another filmmaker’s hands, the situation might play as melodrama, but Eastwood’s earnest, unfussy style makes it feel less far-fetched, centering our attention on Justin’s dilemma.

Editor Joel Cox and his son David keep cutting back to close-ups of Justin’s face, as Hoult telegraphs his turmoil through shifty eyes and nervous glances — emotions he’d surely keep hidden in real life. He’s not the only character facing a crisis of conscience here either: Faith eventually starts to question her case, which could jeopardize her political ambitions, while giving Collette a chance to redeem a character who earlier read as a self-righteous obstacle to justice and now seems like its most Eastwood-worthy champion.

After roughly an hour of tell-tale dialogue designed to trigger Justin’s guilt, Abrams’ script plays a trick toward the end, skipping over the jury’s final vote so as to surprise us when the verdict is read in court — an effective cheat, dramatically speaking, which leaves Justin’s most important decision off-screen. While there’s much to chew on throughout, the film’s ambiguous last few scenes trust us to be the judge.

As always, Eastwood respects our intelligence. And yet, “Juror No. 2” registers as something of an anomaly in his oeuvre: It ranks among his quietest films, forgoing spectacle in favor of self-reflection. One could argue the whole system is on trial, and yet, the only angry man here is Eastwood, not the jurors, as Dirty Harry goes out not with a bang, but an ambivalent whisper.

Clint Eastwood Skips ‘Juror No. 2’ Premiere as Toni Collette and Nicholas Hoult Launch His Latest by Matt Donnelly, Variety 

Clint Eastwood didn’t turn up for “Jury” duty in Los Angeles on Sunday, but that didn’t stop his lead actors and a few hundred moviegoers from sending him well wishes. 

The 94-year-old screen legend’s latest film, “Juror No. 2,” served as the closing night gala screening for this year’s AFI Fest. At the top of the program held at the historic TCL Chinese Theaters, AFI president Bob Gazzale informed disappointed fans that Eastwood “could not be here with us tonight, but we are here for him.” 

After noting his dozens of film credits – including the “Dirty Harry” franchise and directorial efforts like “Richard Jewell” and “Play Misty for Me” –  Gazzale introduced “Juror No. 2” stars Toni Collette and Nicholas Hoult. The pair last graced a screen together 22 years ago, Collette recalled, in 2002’s “About a Boy.”

Collette said she was honored to work with Eastwood  “as a director, which still blows my mind …  but he is a truly good, solid human being. Getting to know him has been incredible.” Hoult shared his nerves over auditioning for Eastwood and “Juror” before joking that audiences would not make much sense of the new movie unless they’d seen “Juror No. 1.” The pair then recorded a video message for Eastwood at the behest of a producer, who said the director would appreciate it. Collette and Hoult got the audience to shout “We love you, Clint!”

For his 40th film as director, Eastwood offers up the story of a family man (Hoult) grappling with recent sobriety and wife (Zoey Deutch) riding out a high-risk pregnancy. A nuisance jury duty assignment brings him face-to-face with a horrible incident from his past, one that forces moral and criminal dilemmas throughout a contentious murder trial. Colette plays a steely prosecutor running for political office. Kiefer Sutherland, Chris Messina, Leslie Bibb, J.K. Simmons and Adrienne C. Moore round out the cast. 

If the AFI Fest audience felt minimal fanfare at the Sunday premiere, domestic audiences might soon expect the same. Last week, Variety reported in depth about the small theatrical release footprint the Warner Bros. project will carry. The studio is rolling out “Juror No. 2” in less than 50 theaters this weekend, sources said, with no current plans to expand to more locations in the following weeks. Warner Bros. is also unlikely to report box office grosses on the film, a rare-but-not-unheard-of practice in the current marketplace. “Juror No. 2” currently has no launch date for PVOD or a streaming debut on Max.

Nicholas Hoult on Working with Clint Eastwood on ‘Juror #2’: “Meet Your Heroes” by Kirsten Chuba, The Hollywood Reporter

Hoult and co-stars Toni Collette and Gabriel Basso also discussed the new film possibly being the 94-year-old's last at the AFI Fest premiere on Sunday.

At the age of 94, Clint Eastwood is back with legal drama Juror #2, following a juror for a high-profile murder trial who is struggling with a serious moral dilemma that could influence the verdict.

Nicholas Hoult stars as the juror, and at the film’s AFI Fest premiere in Los Angeles on Sunday, told The Hollywood Reporter about the “dream come true” of collaborating with the iconic filmmaker after growing up on his movies.

“They always say don’t meet your heroes, but this is a case where it’s amazing to meet your heroes because he’s cool and calm and collected, he has an ease about life and with people and a charm and a glint in his eye and always a cracking sense of humor,” Hoult said. “He cares about what he’s creating, he trusts the people around him and he trusts the audience too.” The actor also praised “the community that he has built — many of the collaborators he’s worked with for many, many years.”

Toni Collette, who stars as the trial’s prosecutor, echoed that she “would have done anything for Clint, I just can’t believe I got to work with him. He’s a dream director. It’s an incredible atmosphere to work within, and there’s a lot of freedom and connectedness and a sense of community on set.” The star-studded cast also includes J.K. Simmons, Kiefer Sutherland, Zoey Deutch, Leslie Bibb and Chris Messina.

With Eastwood — who was not present at the premiere — now in his mid-90s, there is an assumption that this film may be his last. But his cast is keeping a more open door on that, as Hoult said he didn’t want to speculate on Eastwood’s future and was “just glad that whilst I was working I got to make one with him.”

Collette added, “He will do it as long as he wants. I do know in the [writers and actors] strike, I was like, ‘What have you been doing?’ He’s like, ‘I’m looking for material and can’t find anything.’ So he’s endlessly creative, he’s a true artist.”

Gabriel Basso, who plays the accused murderer in the movie, joked of labeling this Eastwood’s final film, “I feel like just because people say that he’s going to say, ‘Screw you guys, I’m making another one;’ even if it’s five minutes long I feel like he’ll find a way just to stick it to everybody.”

Juror #2 will hit select theaters on Friday.

‘Juror #2’ Review: If This Riveting Courtroom Drama Becomes Clint Eastwood’s Final Film Then He Is Finishing On Top – AFI Fest by Pete Hammond, Deadline 

Clint Eastwood‘s 42nd and possibly last film as director (hope not), Juror #2, also happens to be his best since American Sniper. At 94, this remarkable filmmaker not only still has it, he actually has it in spades over some half his age.

Delivering a classic courtroom drama — not a genre he has worked in much — Eastwood has made not just a riveting suspenseful thriller and family drama but also one with penetrating themes such as moral complexity and dealing with a crisis of conscience. It asks the question: What would you do in a similar circumstance but doesn’t answer that with easy solutions. It’s complicated, to say the least.

Eastwood, working with a fine original screenplay by Jonathan Abrams, has made one of the most compelling human dramas of his career, one that inevitably will resonate with smart adult audiences. You could hear a pin drop at Sunday’s world premiere as the closing-night gala of AFI Fest at the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.

Nicholas Hoult stars as Justin Kemp, a regional magazine writer and dedicated family man married to Allison (Zoey Deutch), who is nearing the end of a problematic pregnancy and needs her husband close by when he is summoned to jury duty. He explains his situation to the judge, but she will have none of it, and turns out that he is selected for a murder trial involving Kendall Carter (Francesca Eastwood), a woman who met a brutal death and ended up dead in a ditch off a dark road on a stormy night. She had gotten into a public fight in a roadside bar with her volatile boyfriend, James Sythe (Gabe Basso), who becomes the one and only suspect as prosecutor Faith Killebrew (Toni Collette) paints a picture of a guy who followed her down the road in his car and beat her to death. They even have an older male witness who fingers him as the man he saw in the storm getting back into his car and driving off.

But is it as easy as that? Certainly public defender Erik Resnick (Chris Messina) doesn’t think so and valiantly tries to suggest it was a hit and run and could have been anyone. As the lawyers bicker over the gruesome details, the camera begins focusing on the increasingly concerned face of Justin, who slowly realizes the uncomfortable possibility that he might unwittingly have been responsible. In flashbacks to the events of that night, we see him alone in the same bar with a drink in front of him, and then leaving and driving home in that bad weather, suddenly losing control and hitting something. He gets out of his car, now dented in front, and believes it might have been an animal since there is a deer-crossing warning sign right there, but he sees nothing and drives on. As he sits in the jury box, Justin starts to wonder: Was it he who was actually responsible for Kendall’s death?

Although he didn’t have that drink, it is revealed Justin is a recovering alcoholic who previously had been in legal trouble behind the wheel. Fearing the worst that an innocent man could go to prison for life for something he might have done, he goes for advice to his friend, Larry Lasker (Kiefer Sutherland), who leads his AA group and also is a lawyer and tells him no jury would believe him, especially with his background. He could get 30 years to life.

In the jury room Justin is, at first, the only one of 12 who argues that Sythe might not be guilty, but can he find a way out of this that saves James and himself while still being there for his wife and their baby who is due imminently?

There are so many twists in Abrams’ cleverly constructed scenario, and amazingly they all are plausible. If they weren’t, this whole soufflé could fall, and fall hard. It stays above water. Eastwood always honors the writer and rarely does radical surgery on his film’s screenplays. Here the script has been honed nicely, and Juror #2 also has been exceptionally well cast down to the smallest roles (Geoff Miclat is the casting director).

(Below: Sam Rockwell attends to support Juror #2)

Hoult, who will also be seen this fall in two other major releases (The Order and Nosferatu), takes a difficult role that often relies on just his facial expressions but also is fully three-dimensional as this about-to-be young father has a severe crisis of moral conscience that threatens to upend his life, his marriage and his freedom. Collette as the assistant district attorney now running for the top job, is superb as a prosecutor who is certain she has her guy, only to have doubts she might have gotten it wrong. Sutherland has a brief but important role in terms of defining Justin’s moral dilemma, and Messina is excellent as a public defender who actually believes he has a client who didn’t do it despite surface signs that he did. The jury is perfectly cast and play well off one another, with veteran J.K. Simmons again proving to be a scene-stealer as a man who takes matters into his own hands and does his own investigation when the jury starts to divide.

Shot in and around Savannah, GA, where Eastwood made Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil a quarter-century ago, the film looks great and has a Mark Mancina score that nicely accentuates the story and has strong hints of the kinds of scores Eastwood himself has written for his movies.

Juror #2 , like Conclave, which opened this weekend, proves to be an exceptionally fine entertainment for adult audiences craving something compelling and engrossing — all too rare these days in bringing that discerning older audience back to theaters. Eastwood has delivered Warner Bros. another winner, but the studio doesn’t seem to realize its potential as they are only giving this film a “limited release” with what appears, so far at least, to be a minimal marketing effort for an Eastwood film with this kind of cast (reportedly it originally was only going to streaming — arrrrrgh). And that seems a shame. Audiences, the right audiences, given half a chance, would eat this up. Eastwood has made a film directors like Sidney Lumet (a master of the courtroom drama with 12 Angry Men and The Verdict) and Alfred Hitchcock probably would have loved. Sadly they don’t make ’em much like this anymore. You can thank Clint Eastwood for proving they still can. Juror# 2 is one of the best pictures of 2024.

Clint Eastwood Returns with Juror #2, His Most Entertaining Movie in Years from Paste By Jesse Hassenger

For about 20 years, Clint Eastwood has been directing two basic types of movies: Occasional elegiac farewells to his movie-star career, each seeming more like a potential final starring role than the last; and more frequent and experimental explorations of 20th and 21st century history, an American patchwork told in a combination of war, partial biographies, and occasional footnotes. Juror #2, the latest but probably not last project from the 94-year-old auteur, breaks from this pattern. At its core, it’s a noirish legal thriller and morality play that, apart from some of its more ambiguous shadings and observations about the American legal system, could have served as a programmer released during Eastwood’s teenage years. More than any Eastwood movie since Blood Work, it’s working from a real grabber of a hook: Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult), a magazine writer and expectant father, is selected for jury duty, only to realize the accused is being tried for a crime that Justin himself committed.

Justin isn’t a Trap-style serial killer, disguising his evil with regular-guy affability. His affability comes hard-won; he’s an alcoholic in recovery, and in a moment of strife and weakness some time ago, he visited a former haunt and ordered a drink. He ultimately resisted temptation and left the bar without taking a sip, only to hit something in his car on the way home. Unable to find what he hit, and looking straight at a nearby deer-crossing sign, he assumed it must have been an animal that limped away from this scene. As a jury member, he learns that a woman was killed that night, on that road, and her ex-criminal boyfriend James Sythe (Gabriel Basso) is set to take the fall for her murder. As the accidental perpetrator of a hit-and-run, Justin wants to steer the jury away from a wrongful conviction. But confessing directly would likely mean presumption of a DUI (he already has at least one on record) and, as such, years in prison away from his wife Ally (Zoey Deutch) and their impending baby.

This absorbing premise requires soaking up some contrivances along with it: The case is described as make-or-break for prosecutor Faith Killebrew (Toni Collette), capable of throwing off the closing weeks of her election campaign for district attorney; on its own, a local death that could be plausibly ruled an accident taking on this much importance in a criminal trial seems unlikely. Moreover, accepting the idea of intense public scrutiny draws attention to the fact that until Justin actually sees and recognizes Sythe, he has apparently never put it together that this well-publicized death took place exactly where he was on a particularly memorable, harrowing evening.

Or maybe he’s simply in denial. Juror #2 leaves just enough ambiguities in Justin’s backstory that it sometimes appears to be building toward executing some final corkscrew of a twist. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that Eastwood and screenwriter Jonathan Abrams play fair throughout, without sparing Justin the wringer. His secret knowledge of Sythe’s innocence throws him into conflict with certain members of the jury, and in surprising sync with other, more pliable peers. At one point, it seems as if J.K. Simmons, playing a jury member with a secret of his own, might take over the movie in a vicarious act of older-guy ship-steering. (It’s easy to picture a movie with his character as the lead, maybe even played by Eastwood himself a few decades ago.) Some lopsidedness would not be unexpected; some of Eastwood’s recent films have suffered a little from larger ensembles where it feels like not every actor finds a rhythm with his unfussy, few-takes efficiency. Juror #2 is no less eclectic in that area, but whether by a well-constructed screenplay, Eastwood’s direction, or the simple accident of chemistry, everyone here clicks into place, from veterans like Simmons and Collette to comic actor Cedric Yarbrough in an entirely serious role, to lesser-known figures like Chikako Fukuyama who ably fill out the jury room.

But it’s Hoult’s movie, and the actor deepens his persona of late – the boyish “nice guy” who’s more of an entitled little weirdo that he wants to let on. Rather than scoring cheap satirical points on that tip, the movie performs more serious-minded characterization of Justin as a man whose genuine small-matter decency gets a big-picture test, prodding at whether his advocacy for second chances is purely selfish or manages some accidental moral righteousness. Though it’s fun to see certain screws tighten in its protagonist’s direction, Juror #2 gathers a surprising amount of moral weight behind its well-worn-paperback premise. Rather than exposing mechanical creaks, Eastwood’s more workmanlike qualities behind the camera – this is hardly his most beautiful or delicate project – make this particular film feel alive with the power of … regular grown-up thrillers! It’s no secret that they’ve been in short supply, and that sometimes even an uninspired potboiler can start to look attractive by its very absence from multiplexes. Yet Juror #2 isn’t coasting on slick nostalgia either, either. If anything, it plays on our desire for a courtroom thriller with the confidence to set things right, casting noirish shadows upon its subjects. Eastwood, still so earnestly attuned to the mechanics of personal guilt and faltering systems, finds timelessness in that growing unease.

‘Juror #2’ Review: Clint Eastwood Hands Down a Tough Verdict, The New York Times, By Manohla Dargis

In his latest (and perhaps last) movie as a director, Eastwood casts a skeptical eye at the criminal justice system in a mystery starring Nicholas Hoult.

Clint Eastwood has been such a familiar force in American cinema for so long that it’s easy to think you’ve got him figured out. Yet here he is again, at 94, with a low-key, genuine shocker, “Juror #2,” the 42nd movie that he’s directed and a lean-to-the-bone, tough-minded ethical showdown that says something about the law, personal morality, the state of the country and, I’m guessing, how he feels about the whole shebang. He seems riled up, to judge from the anger that simmers through the movie, which centers on a struggle to find justice within — though perhaps despite — an imperfect system and in the face of towering self-interest.

Justin (a very fine Nicholas Hoult) has just finished fixing up a baby nursery at home when he walks into a Savannah, Ga., courtroom to report for jury duty. He and his wife, Allison (Zoey Deutch), are expecting, and tying themselves into knots of worry because several years earlier, their last pregnancy ended tragically. For them, his civic duties couldn’t have come at a worse time. Even so, Justin shows up, eager and attentive, and before long is seated on a jury in a criminal case that takes an abrupt, unexpected turn: The defendant has been charged with murder, and Justin quickly realizes that he himself might be the real killer.

Did he or didn’t he is one question, and the start of a mystery, both procedural and existential, that soon finds Justin playing at once a freaked-out juror, potential culprit and dogged detective. The defendant on trial, James (Gabriel Basso), has been accused of murdering his girlfriend, Kendell (Francesa Eastwood, the director’s daughter). They’d been drinking at a local dive when they began arguing. They went outside, where it was dark and pouring rain, and continued to fight in front of a smattering of customers who had followed them. She walked off alone, he trailed after her in his truck, and before long she was dead.

It’s a deliciously twisted setup, like something out of an old film noir in which the hero becomes the main suspect and, by desperate default, also slips into the role of a detective working the case. In this movie, voir dire has scarcely ended — Eastwood, who famously likes to work fast, races through the typical preliminaries — when Justin is sweating in the jury box and listening to the prosecutor, Faith (Toni Collette), and the defense lawyer, Eric (Chris Messina), make their cases. Before long, the lawyers have made their closing arguments, and Justin is sequestered in a room with 11 people who are also on the case.

Eastwood takes a bit of time to find his groove. The opener is, by turns, pokey and rushed, and you can almost feel his impatience as he lines up the story’s pieces. He doesn’t seem to have spent much time thinking about the movie’s visuals; they look fine, I wish they looked better. He seems especially uninterested in Justin’s home life, and given how dreary and claustrophobic it looks, you can hardly blame him. Once the trial begins and the lawyers start prodding and probing, Eastwood settles in nicely. Justin realizes that he was at the bar the same night as the defendant and victim, triggering a series of jagged flashbacks that, as the trial continues, grow longer, more detailed and, in time, help fill in the larger picture.

Written by Jonathan A. Abrams, “Juror #2” is a whodunit in which justice turns out to be as much on trial as the defendant. Both sides seem to have a weak case. The defendant is shady, the autopsy inconclusive, the only witness questionable, and there’s an enigma among the jurors, most of whom just want to go home. And while Eric nevertheless delivers a righteously indignant defense, Faith seems overly eager to wrap things up, partly because she’s running for district attorney and already fake-smiling like a glad-handing politician. Their arguments are shrewdly handled, pared down and delivered in a dynamic volley of edits that turn their speeches into a he-said, she-said duel, with a stricken Justin caught in the middle.

Flashbacks, when overused, can leach energy from a story, but the ones in “Juror #2” help build suspense. Each glimpse from the past offers another murky image from Justin’s slow-dawning memory, but they also help sketch in his character and history. Justin is a classic Everyman (there’s a touch of Jimmy Stewart in Hoult at his most skittish), a sympathetic guy with family bona fides and a tragic past that makes him more appealing. He used to drink (Kiefer Sutherland shows up as his sponsor), but he’s straightened out, maybe, possibly. Justin isn’t altogether clear about that dark, stormy night, which means that you aren’t, either, and the question of his guilt or innocence only grows more complicated in the jury room.

As usual, Eastwood has populated the cast with appealing professionals, and it’s a kick to see Hoult and Collette reunited: They played mother and son in the 2002 film “About a Boy.” The jury is packed with a particularly good mix of faces and types, with J.K. Simmons as a worryingly inquisitive retired cop and a memorably grave Cedric Yarbrough as one of the jurors who announces “guilty” almost immediately on entering the jury room. Eastwood doesn’t take obvious sides, which effectively puts you on the same deliberative level as the jurors. Yet as the arguments for and against a conviction ebb and flow, and Justin struggles with the case, as well as his memory and his fears, questions of culpability become murky.

Several times in “Juror #2,” Eastwood cuts to a statue of Lady Justice that stands right in front of the courthouse, her scales gently swaying as if from an otherwise undetected wind. As visual motifs go, it could not be much blunter, even if the first time it appears onscreen, it seems more like ornamentation than a declaration of principles. Over time, though, as the story gathers momentum and its mystery deepens, the symbolism of those rocking scales becomes increasingly stark. Eastwood has explored systemic injustice before, including in “Changeling” and “Richard Jewell.” This is a stronger movie than those two by far, and if this one proves, as rumors have it, that it’s his last as a director, he is going out with a bang.

Juror #2 review – Clint Eastwood puts Nicholas Hoult in court … and an unusual pickle, The Guardian by Ryan Gilbey

The 94-year-old director has delivered a courtroom thriller that pits justice against self-preservation. What are the chances, eh? First you get picked for jury duty even though your pregnant wife might deliver your child before you can deliver a verdict. Then it transpires that you alone know for certain that the defendant accused of murder is innocent. How can you be sure? Because you are the guilty party. Small world!

This is the bind in which Justin – it sounds a bit like “justice”, right? – finds himself at the start of Juror #2, directed with intermittent drollery by Clint Eastwood. Jonathan Abrams’s twisty script sometimes lays the irony on a bit thick. The opening scene shows Justin’s wife (Zoey Deutch) wearing a blindfold like Lady Justice. And we already know that her husband won’t be squeaky-clean by the way she tells him: “You’re perfect!” But Nicholas Hoult, whose angelic looks are undercut by the devilish little upticks in his eyebrows, is a perfect fit for the everyman whose secrets emerge in conflicting flashbacks like a mini Rashomon.

Driving at night in a rainstorm, Justin had hit what he believed was a deer – but which he only now realises was a woman making her way home on foot after a public screaming match with her boyfriend, AKA the accused. Before you can say “Objection!”, Justin is Googling “vehicular homicide” and consulting a lawyer pal (Kiefer Sutherland) who gives it to him straight (“You’re screwed!”). His priority is to steer his fellow jurors away from a guilty verdict without implicating himself in the process.

Suspense is kept on a low flame but the film offers cosy pleasures, not least in the jury-room wrangles; one thing Henry Fonda never had to deal with in 12 Angry Men was the pernicious influence of true-crime podcasts. It’s a tad strange that the murder victim, whose body is repeatedly shown twisted and bloodied at the bottom of a creek, is played by Eastwood’s daughter Francesca. But it is rather lovely that the casting of Toni Collette as the prosecuting attorney makes it seem as if she is locked in a battle of wills with her own son, since that was the role played by Hoult two decades ago in About a Boy.

The bar to which the story keeps returning in flashback is named Rowdy’s Hideaway –a sweet nod to Rowdy Yates, the role that made Eastwood’s name in the TV western series Rawhide. Juror #2 wouldn’t be such a bad way for the 94-year-old director to bow out if the film represents, as he has intimated, his final summing up.

Juror #2 Review, Empire by John Nugent

Father-to-be Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult) is selected for jury service at a murder trial — but it soon becomes clear that he’s more involved in the case than expected. 

Whether playing an outlaw (the Man With No Name of Sergio Leone’s ‘Dollars Trilogy’), a loose-cannon law-enforcer (Dirty Harry) or chronicling the country’s most powerful lawman (J. Edgar), Clint Eastwood has always had a fascination with justice. At 94 years young and on his 40th effort as director, the Hollywood legend with the iconic grimace has now somehow made one of his best films in years.

Like the late, great William Friedkin, who ended his career with 2023’s gripping The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, Eastwood opts for the confines of a courthouse to explore characters and ideas in a sharp, constantly compelling grown-up procedural. This is a riveting examination of what true justice looks like — the kind of straightforwardly entertaining mid-budget legal drama that would have filled a multiplex back in the ’90s.

Working from an original script by Jonathan Abrams — which essentially and inadvertently adapts the classic 1994 Simpsons episode ‘The Boy Who Knew Too Much’ — Eastwood tells the story of Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult), a gentle family man preparing for the birth of his first child, reluctantly called to jury duty. He becomes even more reluctant when he realises, with a shock, that he may have had a role in the murder himself, and is forced to wrestle with his wavering moral compass. As a recovering alcoholic, he thoughtfully applies his 12-steps philosophy to the case, but also acts with self-interest. There’s some very ambiguous, Eastwoodian ideas at play here: of masculinity and honour. How far would you go, the film asks, to protect your family?

It’s a proper nail-biter — literally, given Hoult spends much of the film biting his nails, a nicely pitched ball of quiet tension. Meanwhile, Hoult’s one-time About A Boy mum Toni Collette plays Faith Killebrew, the prosecuting attorney wrapped in her own parallel moral quandary, hungrily chasing a guilty verdict for the sake of her political ambitions.

As with all of Eastwood’s late-period work, it’s low-key, clean, classical filmmaking, efficient and to the point. It is neatly structured too, diligently following the whole affair from jury selection to court case to 12 Angry Men-style deliberations. Sometimes that is to a fault — with lines like, “Here’s to the justice system!”, Eastwood’s themes can feel as blunt as a judge’s gavel — but it neatly encapsulates his conservative political leanings and his warmth and sensitivity as a filmmaker. This is ultimately a character study about a crisis of conscience, told empathetically and with the cool confidence and steady hand that seven decades in the industry affords. He’s still got it.

If this is to be a swansong, it’s a fitting one: a thrillingly watchable legal thriller about truth, justice and (for better and for worse) the American way, as told by an all-American icon. 

Nicholas Hoult and Toni Collette reunite to star in Clint Eastwood's 'Juror #2'

ByJoelle Garguilo, Eyewitness News

NEW YORK (WABC) -- From Oscar-winning director Clint Eastwood comes a gripping new courtroom drama, "Juror #2," a story about conscience and consequence.

This film follows a family man who discovers he may have a devastating connection to the murder trial he's serving on.

The movie has an all-star cast, including J.K. Simmons, Kiefer Sutherland, and Zoey Deutch, with Toni Collette and Nicholas Hoult in starring roles.

Behind the courtroom drama is another story; a touching reunion over 20 years in the making.

Hoult and Collette first shared the screen when Hoult was just 11 in the 2002 movie, "About a Boy." They find themselves back together under Eastwood's direction.

"The fact that the first scene on my first day was the last scene of the movie, and his character is awash," says Collette. "He's got so many things to consider in that moment. And I watched you going through that, and I felt proud in a maternal way."

"Looking over at times, and I was like, 'Oh, wow'," says Hoult. "This person, like, I have such fond memories of and took such wonderful care of me when I was a kid. So I had like, this deep rooted love and adoration. Just everywhere she goes, she brings such joy and light and happiness to everyone around her...and then so it just felt truly special. And now I'm happy that we get to hang and be friends as adults."

This film comes to us from the 94-year-old director Eastwood, whose cinematic legacy includes films like "Million Dollar Baby," "Mystic River," and "American Sniper." Collette shared a personal anecdote from working with the legendary director.

"This is my favorite thing," she recalls. "So we were about to do a shot. It's a big courtroom. It's full and Clint's on the other side of the of the courtroom. Everyone has watched him walk all the way across to me, and he leaned into this ear, and I thought he was going to whisper a note, and he kissed me right here, and I started to cry. He was like, 'OK, let's shoot.' And I'm like,' I can't shoot a freaking thing. How am I meant to act after that,' it was amazing. I'll never, ever forget it. Ever."

    

Juror No. 2’: 94-Year-Old Clint Eastwood Proves That He’s Still the Greatest, by Nick Schager, The Daily Beast

Clint Eastwood’s latest film, the legal thriller “Juror No. 2” starring Nicholas Hoult, is just what adult moviegoers have been craving.

Juror No. 2, an old-school adult thriller whose improbable twists don’t undermine its suspense, proves that even at the age of 94, Clint Eastwood remains a more skillful director than most of his compatriots.

For his 40th (!) behind-the-camera effort, the cinema legend delivers unique courtroom melodrama via the tale of a man who finds himself chosen to determine the fate of an alleged murderer, only to discover that he may have a personal connection to the crime. Unpredictable to the end, and helmed with the auteur’s usual no-frills proficiency, it’s another of Eastwood’s inquiries into the nature of justice, the limits of the legal system to attain it, and the possible need, in that case, to take matters into one’s own hands.

Juror No. 2, which will be released Nov. 1, is merely receiving a ceremonial 50-theater release from the filmmaker’s long-time studio Warner Bros—a puzzling state of affairs given its classic, mainstream Hollywood pleasures.

In Georgia, Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult) and his wife Ally (Zoey Deutch) are on the verge of welcoming their first child into the world. Justin surprises his wife with a newly decorated nursery by covering her eyes and leading her into the room, and later, Ally accidentally turns the lights off in the kitchen while Justin is still cleaning up. Though Eastwood doesn’t underline it, these early instances of sightlessness speak to the material’s interest in the relationship between what is seen and what is known, and they also subtly harmonize with the repeated image of blindfolded Lady Justice holding her trademark scales.

Justin is annoyed that he’s been summoned to jury duty at the precise moment his offspring is about to be born. Regrettably, try as he might, those circumstances don’t get him out of serving, and he’s chosen alongside eleven other citizens to participate in the trial of James Sythe (Gabriel Basso). According to prosecutor Faith Killebrew (Toni Collette), James murdered his girlfriend Kendall Carter (Francesca Eastwood) following a night at Rowdy’s bar that was marred by a fight and Kendall storming off in the rain, announcing to James (and onlookers) that she was done with him. Faith contends that James followed Kendall down the road, bludgeoned her to death, and threw her over the railing, where she was found the following day by a hiker.

Faith doesn’t just want a conviction; she needs it, since it’s the key to her winning an upcoming election for District Attorney. Her public-defender adversary (Chris Messina) is a friend with whom she shares regular drinks, and who’s wholly convinced that James is innocent, implying that Faith’s political fortunes are part of her motivation for seeking a conviction. Before the judge and jury, James takes the stand and pleads his innocence, offering a version of events that differ from eyewitnesses who spied him and Kendall sparring at the bar that evening, and an elderly man who claims that he witnessed an individual—whom he identifies as James—exit his vehicle and look over the railing at the exact spot where Kendall perished.

(Warning: Some spoilers ahead.)

All in all, Faith persuasively argues that James is guilty, and yet Juror No. 2 makes plain early on that he’s not. This is because, upon hearing the details of the homicide, Justin’s mind begins flashing back to that very night, when—upon driving home alone from Rowdy’s—he’d gotten distracted by his cell phone and accidentally hit something with his Toyota 4Runner. When he checked the scene, he saw nothing, and with a “Deer Xing” sign nearby, he figured he’d struck an animal. Now, however, he realizes that he was responsible for killing Kendall, which thus saddles him with a choice between saving his own hide and exonerating the wrongly accused James.

This is pretty close to an only-in-the-movies situation, and it transforms Juror No. 2 into a warped 12 Angry Men in which Justin—after consulting with a lawyer friend (Kiefer Sutherland) who tells him he’s facing upwards of 30 years behind bars if he confesses—tries to convince his fellow jurors that James didn’t kill Kendall, all while avoiding implicating himself. Striving to thread a legal and moral needle, Justin is initially at odds with his compatriots, all of whom are ready to throw the book at James.

Nonetheless, by muddying deliberations with reasonable doubt, he starts swaying a few of them, such as Harold (J.K. Simmons), a flower shop owner who, it turns out, is a retired police detective with a hunch that James isn’t the lethal type—and that, as another juror theorizes, Kendall could have been slain by a hit-and-run driver.

Jonathan Abrams’ script is sharp and efficient enough to almost make Justin’s predicament seem believable, and though the protagonist’s behavior occasionally borders on the dim-witted, his ethical dilemma generates a good bit of tension. Harold’s extracurricular snooping soon piques Faith’s curiosity and, in the process, opens up a can of worms for James, and Hoult conveys his turmoil—caught between prizing his freedom and believing he’s a good man, and wrestling with guilt over possibly consigning James to unwarranted misfortune—with understated intensity.

Eastwood neither asks for nor receives histrionics from his sturdy cast, always maintaining focus on his characters’ internal and external plights and the will-he-or-won’t-he quandary at the heart of his tale. His film’s craftsmanship is similarly unassuming and effective, with cinematographer Yves Bélanger and composer Mark Mancina lending polish to the captivating proceedings.

For the most part, Juror No. 2 plays out in satisfying fashion, dramatizing the tug-of-war between selfishness and altruism that takes place in every democratic institution. Once the embodiment of vigilantism courtesy of Dirty Harry, Eastwood has spent much of his career grappling with the issue of how people achieve peace, honor, and justice for themselves and society at large, and the heavy cost of (literal and figurative) violence upon the soul and the body politic.

For the illustrious titan, the world has never been as black and white as the archetypal Westerns that he subverted in the ’60s and ’70s. If this is his swan song, he goes out with the modest grace, intelligence, and complexity that’s marked his unparalleled oeuvre—right up to a closing note that doesn’t proffer an answer but instead, fittingly, poses a question.