12 Angry Men
Essay by review • December 23, 2010 • Essay • 455 Words (2 Pages) • 1,757 Views
This movie is about 12 white male jurors. Their assigned case is of a young minority male who is on trial for stabbing and killing his own father. Each male has their own issues and does not want to be kept in the jury room all day trying to decide a verdict. Their only focus is to leave, so 11 of the selfish jurors vote guilty, for prejudice reasons, but juror number 8 wants to discuss the case and votes not guilty. The jurors begin to have a heated discussion and some of their minds change and they too vote not guilty. One juror demonstrates the stabbing and shows the other jurors, how it was not possible for the stabbing to have happened in the way the boy was accused. They also discuss the witnesses, one lady said she saw the boy the boy stab his father, from across her bedroom window, through a moving train. They realize this is not a trust worthy testimony considering the woman wore glasses, which she failed to mention. The other witness, an old male, says that he heard the body fall from upstairs and ran to see what happened, determining the amount of time it took the boy to do the actual killing. This was also an untrustworthy statement, because the witness was cripple, so running wasn't possible for him. After some well analysis they reached a verdict, and the boy was found not guilty beyond reasonable doubt.
This story was very interesting and well detailed. The jurors each had their own thoughts and explained it very clearly. There were a lot of racist and prejudice comments and feelings in this film, which was a big problem and did occur during the time this story took place (1950s). The actors were unknown, but talented actors, which made the movie more realistic.
The importance of this film, is not to judge a person whether it's based on race, where they live, or how much money they have. An important character in this film was juror 8, because he brought out the idea to discuss the case and argued against the other 11 men. By the end of the day all the jurors changed their mind and learned an important life lesson. They now can see past the color of a person's skin and their social class. Not being prejudice or a racist is the important message this writer is trying to send out. We can all learn from this story.
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