12 Angry Men Review

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Characters:

Jury #1 – He acts like a sort of a chairman, who takes notes from the whole meeting. He always sums up the votes, but does not really say his opinion and beliefs. He just calmly changes his mind after some time due to reasonable proofs. He seems to be rather neutral.

Jury #2 – He believes in the boy’s guilt straight away without any further thoughts about it. He does not even have any good reasons to support his belief.

Jury #3 – He is a very strong character. He is the toughest one to convince about the boy’s innocence, resulting in him being the very last to agree with others. He is very hot-headed and rather violent – a trait he has gained throughout the times when he was an executioner. Plus, he had some problems with his own son in the past, which ended up in not seeing him in 3 years. Due to these circumstances, he stubbornly supports his belief that the boy is guilty until the very end, even after all the evidences were proved false.

Jury #4 – Throughout the whole story, he is very composed, and reasonable. He does not put any emotions into his opinion on the boy’s guilt or innocence. He just leans on the evidences, and tries to figure out what really happened. After everything what witnesses said was proved to be false, he admits that the boy is innocent, and changes his vote to “not guilty” without any objections or emotions.

Jury #5 – At first, he believes that the boy is guilty, but does not give any reasons behind his decision. Later, it turns out that he comes from slum as well. Based on this, he probably considers the boy to be guilty because he has seen murders like this many times before. However, after some of the evidences were proved to be false, he changes his mind quite easily since he knows how the murder must have occurred.

Jury #6 – He does not seem to have any own opinion on the case from the very beginning. He simply votes for “guilty” because he assumes that everyone will vote for that. He actually seems to be very open-minded to this case as he considers everything that’s being said by others in order to make up his mind. He even helps figure out the whole scenario how the murder occurred.

Jury #7 – He seems to be very impatient. The truth is that he’s got some theatre tickets for that night. Therefore, he wants the meeting to finish as quickly as possible in order to be able to attend the show. As a result, he even changes his vote to “not guilty” very quickly when he assumes that the meeting is not going to end soon. However, he seems to be convinced about the boy’s innocence at the end.

Jury #8 – He is the only one, who votes for “not guilty” right from the beginning. He simply does not want to sentence someone to death without further consideration of all facts, evidence, and circumstances. He tries to thoroughly look at all the evidence with clear mind and critical thinking. In the end, he ends up convincing everyone about the boy innocence.

Jury #9 – He is the oldest jury. At first, he votes for “guilty” quite unsurely. Later, he is the first one to change his original vote for “not guilty”. It seems like he changes his mind only to support the Jury #8 because he “admires” the fact that he stands up for the boy’s innocence all by himself. However, throughout the story, he is more and more convinced about the boy’s innocence as well.

Jury #10 – He is a very grouchy man, who does not trust any slum people. He wants the boy to be punished because he believes that everyone from slum is dangerous. When he tries to support his belief about the boy’s guilt by leaning on the testimony of the woman, who “saw” the murder, he is questioned by the Jury #8 that if he does not trust any slum people, he should not trust the woman either since she is one of them. In the second half of the movie, he has a big outburst, shouting that this is all nonsense, and the boy is clearly innocent. It seems like he experienced something very bad (or even tragic) thanks to slum people. Maybe someone from his family was killed by someone from the slum, resulting in him being so hateful.

Jury #11 and Jury #12 – These two juries are not very strong characters in the movie. They do not really put any emotions, or biased opinions on the case. Somewhere halfway through the story, they change their votes for “not guilty” as well.