12 Angry Men (1957) | Teen Ink

12 Angry Men (1957)

April 10, 2015
By Spoodermanderp PLATINUM, Quezon City, Other
Spoodermanderp PLATINUM, Quezon City, Other
36 articles 0 photos 0 comments

Just seen it and boy was I amazed. Never have I been so intrigued with a movie with just dialogue for the most part. It proves that you don't need big budget CGI visuals or A-List actors or even breathtaking action sequences to deliver an intriguing and enthralling experience. I tried giving this movie a shot since it's about debating and recently got into a club about debating and I figured that this movie could give me an idea and get to know the basics, but I didn't know that it would've exceeded my expectations way ahead of that. 12 Angry Men is about 12 jurors who are deciding on the faith of a Latino American whether he is guilty or not guilty on killing his father. But then, as voting commence, 11 voted guilty while 1 voted not guilty, and this is where the plot advances.

All 12 main characters gave wonderful performances while two actors stood out, Henry Fonda as the one guy who voted not guilty and Lee J. Cobb for the guilty part respectively.  

The film also goes deeper wherein it also talks about today's society. At the start of the film, it shows how these 12 strangers who come together to talk about one topic, have all different personalities and experiences, yet at the start of voting it's implied that most the jurors voted because of the majority. In today's world we also cling to the things that majority deem better, we don't stop and think we just simply assume that if many people go for this decision then we should also go for that decision. This is part of the reason why society keeps on stumbling down, and to quote Charlie Chaplin from his movie The Great Dictator (1940) "We think too much and feel too little". The film shows this very well on how these heartless people at start just don't care at all for the faith of the convict and care more about their personal wants.

The film also makes you think if you're a juror that you might have thrown in an innocent person to jail or even death. It's an intriguing movie, well shot, well acted, brilliant screenplay, intense moments, emotional and heart hitting scenes, all these delivered in just 1 hour and a half of dialogue, people might think this may be impossible and stupid in today's standards of cinema, but it's only because we lost creativity and deep thinking, that we only resort to brainless ideals and personal wants, we no longer feel in fact, we no longer think as well.

Verdict: 10/10


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