12 Angry Men

Watched: 21st November 2015

Top 250 Position: 7 (5 when watched)
Rating: 8.9/10 from 414,235 users              
Correct at 10th January 2016

Who's in it:
Marin Balsam
John Fiedler
Lee J. Cobb
E.G. Marsha;;
Jack Klugman
Edward Binns
Jack Warden
Henry Fonda
Joseph Sweeney
Ed Begley
George Voskovec
Robert Webber

Directed By: Sidney Lumet

Year: 1957

Duration: 1 hour 36 minutes

Accolades: Nominated fro 3 Oscars, Best Picture (Henry Fonda & Reginald Rose), Best Director (Sidney Lumet) and Best Writing, Screenplay based on material from another medium (Reginald Rose).

Plot:

It's the hottest day of the year and a murder trial is underway. The jury of 12 men break to make their decision, but is the case as clear as they thought to begin with? One member of the jury stands against the group to make them think again about the whether the evidence given in court is really enough to convict the defendant of murder.

Interesting Facts About the Film:

• At the beginning of the film, the cameras are all positioned above eye level and mounted with wide-angle lenses to give the appearance of greater distance between the subjects. As the film progresses the cameras slip down to eye level. By the end of the film, nearly all of it is shot below eye level, in close-up and with telephoto lenses to increase the encroaching sense of claustrophobia.
• Sidney Lumet had the actors all stay in the same room for hours on end and do their lines over and over without taping them. This was to give them a real taste of what it would be like to be cooped up in a room with the same people.
• Shot in a total of 365 separate takes.
• Nominated for 3 Oscars, the film lost out in all its categories to The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957).
• All but three minutes of the film was shot inside the bare and confining, sixteen by twenty-four foot "jury room".
• Because the painstaking rehearsals for the film lasted an exhausting two weeks, filming had to be completed in an unprecedented 21 days.

Source IMDb.com

Review

The oldest film in the top 10, and the second oldest in top 20. Just this in itself must tell you that this is something special, and it is.  It is black and white, which I know some people might find off putting. I've always been a big fan of black and white movies so I was actually looking forward to seeing this movie.
I did see snippets of this movie in school, where it was used to emphasise persuasive arguments so I've never seen this all the way through and have to say I was glued throughout.
As it is a murder charge a guilty vote will result in the death penalty, so it has to be a unanimous decision. The way in which this is reached is superb.

Of the actors in the movie I had only ever heard of Henry Fonda, which I think is a shame as all of the actors were great.

None of the jurors are known by their names just juror numbers. You have the people who are impatient and want a quick decision and those that will just go along with a group decision. But is Juror 8 (Fonda) about to make them take longer to decide.

As the movie appears to be in almost real time this adds to the overall appeal of the movie.

Hopefully all of the actors and crew got to know how well their movie was received, though I'm sorry to see it has slipped two places since I saw it in November.

This is what a movie should be about, good story line and good acting. It doesn't need special effects and all of that.

Whether this movie would translate into a modernised version would be debateable, and seeing as the original is so good what would be the point?

For more information about the film visit the imdb.com page: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050083/