12 Angry Men

SPEAKER_02 0:15

Is there an intro?

SPEAKER_04 0:16

No.

SPEAKER_02 0:17

Just going for it. Yeah. There should be an intro. I started watching because I know we're not doing a full episode, but I did start watching Masters of the Universe. Alright. How's that? Really camp. Okay. I haven't got well, I've got to skeletor and stuff. Yeah. But it's really long, it's two and a half hours long. So it's quite excessive. There's loads of fist in gags, which seems strange. And that seems yeah, a bit inappropriate. Yeah, yeah. So that's what I was going to do.

SPEAKER_03 0:44

Okay. I just thought we should all come out arguing then. And there would have been like four hours. I won't do that. Oh right. Well, don't bother then. I think that would have been a better start. What do you think, Chris?

SPEAKER_01 0:54

I I was gonna argue with you because you thought you knew what I was gonna say and completely wrong. Oh right. Well what were you gonna say? Despite the fact that you write all the intros, it's not really all about you, Riggs. Oh. What were you gonna say? Because I wasn't actually. I was gonna say that I did watch this film, obviously, and I was I'm pretty convinced I watched it before. Right. However, I don't really remember all of it, but I do remember bits of it, so I wasn't gonna say that I think someone or someone might not be guilty. I think it was. It was more the fact that it was more the fact that I've definitely seen this film before.

SPEAKER_03 1:28

They've done it before in 1997, as well as this 1950s version. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

No, no, this one, the the the Henry Fonda one. I've definitely seen this one before. I've definitely watched it with my dad. It's 12 Angry Men. It is.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

Yeah, well we're four Angry Men. We're not really angry. I'll get angry at the Brazil one, but I'll get over it.

SPEAKER_03 1:48

Four miffed idiots in the more accurate. That's probably right. Yeah, there has been a lot of World Cup content going on in my world recently, more than movies, but this is an absolute classic.

SPEAKER_02 2:03

A wild you know, widely acknowledged sort of classic fairness, isn't it?

SPEAKER_04 2:06

Yeah, incredible piece of science fiction, I think, taking place as it does in an alternate universe where people can be persuaded of things through rational thought and things like truth and justice matter.

SPEAKER_02 2:16

Well, it was black and white world.

SPEAKER_04 2:18

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:19

I don't think much of the lawyers in this, though. What must have happened. Anyway, because we join it at the end, right? Yes. Yeah. The judge basically telling them to fuck off. And I guess you didn't have women on juniors at this point.

SPEAKER_03 2:32

Why would you to make such big decisions? But yeah, we we've the trial has been We don't even see the closing arguments. We just trial the judge. The judge looking a bit bored.

SPEAKER_02 2:41

Hot and bored.

SPEAKER_03 2:41

Yeah, really hot. It's it's a hot city, it's a heat wave, much like we've just had actually. Yeah, not gonna happen again. And these guys have all got better places to be, none of them really want to be there. Yeah, and it seems a very much open and closed case of murder.

SPEAKER_02 2:59

It says this is this is the death sentence, isn't it?

SPEAKER_04 3:00

Yeah, it says it's a death sentence, and you you cannot have a hung jury, you know, this has got to be a unanimous decision. All or nothing.

SPEAKER_02 3:06

So you're in that fucking hot run to figure it out.

SPEAKER_04 3:10

Yeah. And we briefly get a shot of who we're talking about, the the the boy at whose fate we are to decide. Mesa Dozel. Mesa Erzil, yeah. Kind of has that phrase prehenge. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A young, pretty young looking. He's just kind of rich or something.

SPEAKER_03 3:28

He's a Hispanic kind of 18-year-old that's been accused of killing his father.

SPEAKER_04 3:32

And this is one of the only shots that takes place outside of the little room over the top over the runtime. So they end up filing into this little room which will be the space for the movie.

SPEAKER_03 3:44

Yeah, and they get locked in. Anybody that's been on jury duty before will know, no, I've never been, but they'll know that you're you're in a hot, sweaty room and you can't leave. But no, they do keep it all very much boxed in, don't they? And you you're not allowed to get that influence from outside and all the rest of the stuff. You would have no phones nowadays and all that shit. And this is back in the day, and although it's shot beautifully shot in black and white, but you can feel the heat as well. You can, and it's emphasized through the characters sort of dabbing and mopping at their brows and the biggest.

SPEAKER_04 4:16

But you can see the sweat on them as well. All except for Jura No. Actually, who stays ice cool until the very end of the movie?

SPEAKER_03 4:24

See the one with those glasses in the suit, don't I? Sidney Lumit, who did this film, he kept them all in there for hours just talking to each other, going over and over.

SPEAKER_04 4:32

They rehearsed it for two weeks and then he shot it as the camera moved around. He didn't shoot it in order, he shot it from each of the characters' perspectives as the camera moved round, which is a crazy thing to do.

SPEAKER_02 4:42

But there's one guy, I don't know, is he appointed to sort of be the head of the jurors, or is he just you're a number one, so you by default you become the formula. So he he sits them all down and they decide they're gonna sit in order and they'll do an initial vote, and some people just not a secret ballot, but just show of hands. Yeah. And there's probably like half a dozen straightaways say guilty, and then there's a few tentative hands that just all follow, and then there's one.

SPEAKER_03 5:09

It's eleven of the twelve.

SPEAKER_02 5:10

It's eleven one. That say guilty, and so I mean we're we're like juror number eight two minutes to decide that they're gonna send this guy off to death row. And so juror number eight says, Well, I think we should talk about it. Yeah. At least go through it a bit.

SPEAKER_04 5:27

Some guy, juror number seven, has already made a glib comment about trying to get to the ball laser. And it's clear from the off that some of these guys are not treating this very seriously. Jura number twelve is an ad executive who just seems to be there to like glad hand people and kind of. Yeah, the guy tries to give them the card.

SPEAKER_01 5:43

It's like, oh, this is what I'm doing, and you kind of make jurors and a pack of cereal or something. Yeah, and then the other guy's like, oh okay, mate, then he puts the card back in his A again.

SPEAKER_03 5:54

If you've like had any experience of jury duty, then it's something. No, but I have I've had none at all. Absolutely nothing. But if you have, you might also agree with me that you get the letter through because I've seen it. Friends and family have have been called up, and you you're expected to go. Like, you know, you can't get out of here. You need a good excuse to go, yeah. A good excuse to go, like you know, that you're you're caring for your family or a plane ticket or something, yeah. Something so these guys have all been caught up with better places to be and and more important places to be in their minds, and they want out. So jury number eight says, Look, okay, if everybody if everybody we'll go anonymous this time though, but if every let hear me out and if everybody agrees with me Well he may he may he makes some points before they He does he get because I mean the main thing is they're like You think he's innocent?

SPEAKER_04 6:46

He's like no I'm just not convinced beyond reasonable doubt, which is the thing. We're gonna kill this guy we've been determined, and death, you know, it's in his life is in his hands. And I think there is a quick break quite early on where they go to the bathroom. It's the only other scene that's in there because one of the other jurors will challenge him and say, What if he is guilty and you're sticking up for him as being innocent? So he's got that to weigh on his conscience as well. And what it is a thing to stand up in front of everybody else when everybody's saying guilty to say not I think not guilty.

SPEAKER_03 7:17

But it is a it's a good call. He wants to be sure that beyond reasonable doubt. So he sets out a couple of these arguments and then they have an anonymous vote.

SPEAKER_04 7:26

Well the anonymous vote I think is after the they start talking about he wants to start talking about the specifics of the case, and one of the things is the uniqueness or otherwise of the murder weapon, which is a switchblade. Yeah. And they're it's the first of like several facts that will be demolished that everybody else has just taken for granted. Juror number four is a he's a stockbroker and a rationalist. I think he's probably the most logical of all of the people there. So he's the one who will get involved in all of these conversations quite a lot. So yeah, they're all convinced about the uniqueness of this blade that the they've said that the the prosecution has said is a one of a kind, and then juror number eight pulls one out of his pocket and is like, I went wandering down the streets, and this is where you can just go and get these six dollars, it was. Six dollars, yeah. So it's the first time that people start to be shaken, and when they do a vote after that, somebody else has joined him. He's juror number nine, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:20

Was it nine, was it?

SPEAKER_04 8:21

Yes, it's the old man.

SPEAKER_02 8:22

Yeah, the old man, and and then there's another guy across the table who's like, I grew up amongst because then you start to get you start to get a few comments about those people, and you're like, oh, okay.

SPEAKER_04 8:33

Right. Well that's juror number ten is really overtly racist. The leader of the sort of guilty, the one who's most convinced is jurac, but there's one who's there's another one who's grown up with him and he's not racist. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:43

There's another one who's grown up with him, but he's not racist. He's like number five. He's the one that votes no next. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 8:50

So you you get a few, you start to get their characters. Basically sort of split into camps. So you've got Lee Cobb as as Jura number three, he's who lets slip quite early on that he's had a a sort of an estrangement from his son. Yeah. Yeah. He said something about they he he wasn't much of a fighter and they got into a fight and his son punched him and he hasn't seen him for three years or whatever. And then jura number five, you start to find out he's actually from the kind of slummy area where this comes from and has some sympathy, maybe more to a community and awareness of what's going on.

SPEAKER_02 9:21

So getting to know the the things that the case hinges on is that they've heard a fight, they've heard someone. They've heard someone say, I'll sc I'll kill you. I'm gonna kill you.

SPEAKER_04 9:32

And he eventually goads juror number three into saying I'll kill you in the courtroom.

SPEAKER_02 9:37

Then they hear a body hit the deck, and then an eyewitness has seen from across in through a train window, has been able to positively ID, so they say.

SPEAKER_04 9:46

And an old man has been IDing him three hours later retrieving the murder weapon.

SPEAKER_02 9:51

And he said that he'd his mu his alibi was that he'd been at the movie cinema but he couldn't remember, because they nailed one of them on that, on what film he'd been to see. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

Or who the or who the character stars were of that film, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:05

And so it's about figuring out are these things as plausible as it was sort of made out. And he's certainly where he says, I don't think that the defence attorney really gave a shit, you know, to really fight this guy's case very much. So they kind of go through all these points and just trying to see if they're valid or not.

SPEAKER_04 10:23

They perform a s a couple of different experiments and that sort of thing to like prove how long it would take for the old man to get, you know, and they discuss his physical condition. He had a club foot, I think, and he was dragging it. So how long would it take him to walk 43 feet? Would it be the 15 seconds he said? Yeah. And also the angle of the murder weapon, how you hold a switchblade, whether it would be down or up, like the angle is down.

SPEAKER_02 10:47

Yeah. But then the other guy says that's not how you you would hold it like that. You open it and you you just take too long to open it, change it, do that. You just open it. This wouldn't have gone down. It's professional to do it that way. It's it's like if it's I've seen people fight with those, and that's not how you do it.

SPEAKER_04 11:01

So slowly they start demolishing or put at least calling into doubt some of the facts. And everybody is to an extent getting drawn in. Jura number seven, the baseball guy is not really. He just really wants this thing over and done with. He's just yeah, he's just like a fucking idiot. But other people have their motivations, you know. Jura number one wants to keep everything going, juror number two is the timid bank clerk, he'll come up with a an important point that he's observed right towards the end, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Uh Jura number four is the logical guy, juror number five, we know. I can't remember, Jura number six was the guy who challenges him in the restaurant. We get all the way through it until there's a big, essentially racist outpouring from Jura number ten. Yeah. Which, you know, is supposed to be at the heart of some of this. He's just like, Oh, you know what those people are like.

SPEAKER_02 11:54

He's just like losing steam in his own argument about he's just like basically just outing himself as a huge bigot. Yeah. And then he's obviously like, oh god, what do I sound like?

SPEAKER_04 12:02

And you get this incredible shot of everybody moving away from they leave. Turn their back on him. And then let him run, and then they're like, That's enough from you. And also, Lume does this thing where the camera starts really high during the movie and stays really high, but during the movie gets lower and lower and lower and closer into the actors. So by the end, it's like there in your face as we get to the resolution of it, which is really cool. And so after having demolished all these arguments, the case.

SPEAKER_02 12:30

But they get the banker guy or the stockbroker guy on the film thing.

SPEAKER_04 12:33

He's the final one, and his position is just cold logic. He's like, well, if I You know, I think her testimony It's a bit like that. Her testimony about her glasses, he's shaken. He starts to sweat when he realizes that the alibi about not remembering the movie could be plausible because he couldn't remember the movie he'd seen a few days ago.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

He was four days ago or something like that. He went with the missus and he's like, the second one, well, it was someone that I didn't really know. The first one he can tell straight. He's like, It was the brilliant Mr. Summer.

SPEAKER_02 13:02

He goes, I saw that film, it was the magnificent Mr. Summer. He's like, Oh fuck, I fucked him. And then the second bit.

SPEAKER_03 13:07

It's a real Sherlock bit, isn't it? It's a real kind of where he just takes his glass off and he just kind of rubs his the his nose with That's the old man, isn't it? And he he ri he realizes then that's what the woman did in the in the in the trial, the old woman over who'd been the witness, and he realised, well, she must wear glasses. That's why she's done that because she didn't wear them into court.

SPEAKER_02 13:30

And and her thing is that she had heard a noise, got out of bed. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 13:33

And they're like, Well, you shouldn't get out of bed at put your glasses on at three o'clock in the morning and then so how convinced through the windows of a train. Of a passing train, yeah. Um it's a lot to to put a man's life on. And that takes the now at this point, it actually switches it so it's eleven to one the other way around, where Lee Cobb now is the only man clinging on to the guilty version.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

That's when he he tears the picture in the room.

SPEAKER_02 13:57

Yeah, first of all, he's just so belligerent. He doesn't want to be like lose face and say, Yeah, I was wrong or or I could be wrong. He just so in his way till he sees the picture of his lad and he just leaves.

SPEAKER_04 14:11

Rotten kids, rotten children, or whatever. Yeah, and he's essentially holding this child guilty of this crime on behalf of his own son who's wronged him. Then he's got a deep resentment of the youth. So he will eventually also come round to the correct decision.

SPEAKER_03 14:28

Yeah. And and that's it. It was just the the jury number eight who had questioned it and you know, put the the thought of are we a hundred percent sure this back out to these other eleven?

SPEAKER_04 14:45

And they did the I mean everybody else would have literally just walked in there and gone guilty, yeah, guilty.

SPEAKER_02 14:48

Oh, we were like two minutes in, they would have just the guy would have been sent to death row. I mean and they can't. They don't actually prove there's no like, yeah, this guy's innocent. They're just like, no, there's a reasonable. We can't hundred percent say that his kid killed his dead. We just can't say that. Yeah. So you cannot have someone killed for that.

SPEAKER_04 15:04

I don't think we see the verdict being returned, do we? We just actually see them leave the courthouse one by one, and then the two jurors, eight and nine, just exchange names on the steps. So he says, Oh, what's your name?

SPEAKER_03 15:15

Davis McCardell, I think he says two two kind of reasonable juries out of it all.

SPEAKER_04 15:22

And they I couldn't have been more fond of this.

SPEAKER_03 15:25

Yeah. Well, it it is an absolute classic. I mean, I've I've watched this probably. This one in the Edward Binns. Yeah, I've I've watched this at least three times over the years. It's an absolute, you know, stonewall classic of the genre. I mean, it was Oscar nominated, I think, three times, but also importantly, I think it's been shown even in in US history, because there's one long speech where they talk about the the US justice system being one of real honour and you know, one of of great care and fairness and justice and all those kind of things. If you make it the court. And I think there was one season there is one idealistic time. Yeah, one great kind of court justice now who's who says to her juror, watch this, like you know, before you start deliberating too much and just going straight towards a Yeah, there's several things that you could they did in this though that would have caused a mistrial if they'd done it immediately.

SPEAKER_04 16:32

I mean, this this isn't like the put get producing a duplicate murder weapon in the room is a s is a big no-no.

SPEAKER_03 16:38

Yeah. Bringing a bringing a weapon into the knife to a gunfight i is wrong. But there is there's obviously a lot around the the understanding of deliberation and and being given a fair trial.

SPEAKER_04 16:52

It's more about when it's everybody's representing an idea, aren't they, really? And it's like systematically explained to you and then knocked down each time.

SPEAKER_03 17:02

Well, but there they you need to be open enough to be able to talk about and not bigoted enough to just stick to your position, which obviously he was right to the end because you he's realising he's carrying his own you know filters through this, his own preconceived ideas of what happens because of the things that has happened in his life, not the facts of the case. And they've had to, you know, between them pick at it. They've all got little bits of information like you know, the the juror who's guessed the glasses, he wore glasses, so he knows he's done that and he puts that together, and it's it's another big piece of the jigsaw that helps can further convince other members of the the jury. It's shot in a month in one room, you know. This film, it's it's not one of those. The other kind of thing that I I love about these films, like we watched Coherence back the the pod a few probably a couple of years ago now, wasn't it? And it has that same kind of you know brilliance that you can put a fantastic film together without a huge set, without going out and you know, it's around the idea and it's around the the conversation.

SPEAKER_01 18:14

And also the performance because it's really difficult to keep things going. And and don't get me wrong, I had a probably about a ten minutes period when I fell asleep at this film. Only ten. Yeah. Yeah. But generally I was I was fairly focused on it, and there's very few films that are like you say, films. It's an old film also, yeah. Especially for a for a black and white film to just be still be able to to be curious and be kind of there and not grab your phone or not go up for a cup of tea or whatever. So to to have that. And everyone kinda had their part, even the ones that because there's a couple of them that don't really say that much. Yeah. But when they do, they do make a difference or they can shift the opinion. Everyone's half of them in the room.

SPEAKER_04 19:00

Because there's like just a brilliant economy of everything in this, like every line furthers the story in terms of their character or their belief system or the where they're from or like it's so tight, and then you know, so it's just a and great ensemble and it was directorial debut as well. Yeah. Do you think what's his name? Cobb looks a bit like Jason Siegel. Mixed with Louis Mandelore that we did uh thing.

SPEAKER_02 19:24

I thought he reminded me. Cobb was number three. Yeah. He reminded me of Rodney Dangerfield for some reason.

SPEAKER_03 19:33

Yeah, he is a bit like Dangerfield, I reckon. But I mean Cobb's been in tons of movies and a really kind of big time actor, and obviously Henry Fonday. He's one and only film.

SPEAKER_02 19:45

Yeah, amazing. Um we have any stats for this? It wasn't a huge box office smash.

SPEAKER_03 19:52

No, it was a floppy-floppy. Critics liked it and the Academy recognised it with nominations. I don't know what won the US National Film Registry.

SPEAKER_04 20:03

The big thing about it is it started coming up against colour. That was its problem, and black and white was going out of fashion in 1954.

SPEAKER_02 20:10

I haven't seen the remakey thing of it. No, William Friedkin did a TV version of it.

SPEAKER_04 20:17

Yep. And it's been multi I think it's been multiple T V versions across all countries. I get it.

SPEAKER_02 20:24

If someone's had a great idea and there's been uh an attempt at it and it has landed, then remake that. But just show just watch this.

SPEAKER_04 20:30

But this one you could set anywhere and just do a very personal exploration of your justice system and your cultural things. Like that's that's what makes this so good, right? You could rewrite this now and it would be different, but it would be good again.

SPEAKER_01 20:44

Yeah, the premise would be the same. Yeah. Like someone's accused of doing this, whatever this is.

SPEAKER_04 20:50

And now let's examine our prejudices, let's examine all this the cultural kind of norms of the day and day.

SPEAKER_01 20:56

Because it is true in the jury in the in the court, obviously for those who have been. Have you been done?

SPEAKER_03 21:01

No, I've not been.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

Okay. Um But but for those who have, there's all sorts from different walks of life. So you could be someone that works as a bin man, someone that works in a restaurant, you can be someone that works in a bank, you can be someone that's a lawyer, you can be someone that's uh uh uh tough or whatever they're called. You know, you you went to private school, you didn't.

SPEAKER_04 21:21

You can be old, you can be young, can even be a woman. Uh really?

SPEAKER_00 21:24

That's what they've changed these days. Okay, correctly. It's all sorts these days. Yeah. Not sure what to make of that, but there we go.

SPEAKER_03 21:31

Overall? Overall, it is for me one of the best black and white films we've seen on the pod, and it's a strong recommend.

SPEAKER_04 21:40

Yes, the strongest of strong recommends. Very good. Yeah. Strong. Really strong.