Since his directorial debut back in 1971 with “Play Misty For Me,” Clint Eastwood has quietly chugged along making some of the sturdiest, most entertaining, adult-minded movies of any given year. His latest film, “Juror #2” is the kind of movie we used to get about five times a year in the ‘90s when the Grisham boom had studios pumping money into taut, always entertaining and often silly, legal thrillers like “The Pelican Brief,” “The Firm” or “A Time To Kill.” You’d be forgiven for not being aware that Clint Eastwood has a new movie out. You’d be even more forgiven for not knowing that it might be his last. Who won’t be forgiven is the Warner Bros. Studio apparatus and CEO David Zaslav who decided to punt the probable final film of one of the greatest living American filmmakers to MAX without the fanfare, or the bravado, that it should have been afforded. It is all the more tragic not just that this is the state of the industry, where movies like “Juror #2” are rarely made at all, but even more so that the movie is, unsurprisingly, very, very good.
“Juror #2” follows Justin Kemp, a young husband (Nicholas Hoult) and future father, as he is called for jury duty while his wife (Zoey Deutch) is late term on a difficult pregnancy. Despite his best efforts, he does end up being stuck in the jury room on a very public, and consequential case. A year previous, a young woman had been found dead on the side of a lonely two-lane highway. The District Attorney (Toni Collette), who just so happens to be up for reelection, is sure they have their killer and is prosecuting the woman’s boyfriend for the murder. There’s only one problem, Justin knows what really killed that woman. It wasn’t a murder, it was an accidental hit-and-run. And he, unknowingly, was the driver.
This kind of thorny morality play is catnip for Eastwood and offers the audience no easy answers as to who to root for and who to punish. Justin is a good man who knows that if he stays silent an innocent person will go to prison for life. At the same time, if he comes clean, his wife and future child will be without him, and their lives will be ruined. The film remains firmly planted in the earnest desire of decent people to do the right thing, even while entangled in a quagmire of conflicting interests. Where is justice when punishing an accident leads to only more misery? Who amongst us could pull the lever on our own guillotine?
Hoult, one of the most dynamic and effective leading men of his generation, is having a fantastic year between this film, “Nosferatu” and “Superman” next year. With ease that belies how hard it is to be as effective as he is, Hoult is able to hold the film’s center while never betraying his motivations as anything but selfless. While Justin’s actions swing from first trying to exonerate the man he knows is innocent to then trying to convict him when he feels he has no choice, we never question or even really judge his motivations. Hoult plays Justin as an every-person, a direct mirror for the audience to consider what we might do in a similar situation. The rest of the cast is filled out with an absolute cracker-jack ensemble featuring the likes of J.K. Simmons, Chris Messina, and Kiefer Sutherland, all veterans who should be making at least one movie in this vein every year. Eastwood, for his part, makes all of this look easy; crafting the film as a carpenter would a fine chair that should last for generations, the mark of a true artist at the peak of his creative powers who still has so much to offer an eager, and ravenous, audience in desperate need of his talents.
The movie is streaming on MAX right now but did spend a very short amount of time in a small amount of theaters. I spoke to my father recently about the film, which he had unjustly never heard of, and explained the tumultuous journey it took through the recesses of the streaming/theatrical miasma. My father wondered if the movie being punted to streaming meant that the movie wasn’t very good; a common belief, yet one that could not be further from the truth. In 2024, the machinations of why certain movies get kicked out of theaters or even deleted from existence have little to nothing to do with quality. More incredible filmmaking gets shuffled onto an app you’ve never heard of than ever makes it to theaters; and “Juror #2” is no exception. A fantastic film, oozing with nuance and incredibly layered performances that lead to probably my favorite final shot of any film this year; Eastwood’s latest, and hopefully not his last, is the kind of movie that in a better world families would flock to on Christmas Day. Alas, our world is more complex than that and most of us will have to settle for watching “Juror #2” not in a theater as it was intended, but in the relative comfort, and unfortunate solitude, of our homes.
How’s that for justice?
If you’re tired of the usual Christmas movie onslaught, pop on “Juror #2” and let Eastwood work his magic one last time.
You’ll be glad you did.
