If there’s a downside to living to 94 and remaining healthy enough to work in Hollywood after being an entertainment icon in seven different decades, it’s that your films become impossible to separate from the arc of your life. A straightforward legal thriller can’t possibly be evaluated on its own terms when it hails from the nonagenarian who played Sergio Leone’s Man with No Name, sold countless .44 Magnums with an invitation to make his day, befriended a monkey in the two stupidest movies of the ‘70s, directed “Unforgiven,” “Letters From Iwo Jima,” “The Bridges of Madison County,” and “Million Dollar Baby,” spoke to an empty chair at the Republican National Convention, and spent the COVID-19 pandemic declaring his admiration for anyone who names his cock Macho.
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When Clint Eastwood’s 40th directorial effort, “Juror #2,” premiered at AFI Fest 2024, it was accompanied by the hefty expectations that follow 65 years on the silver screen. It had to be compelling enough to explain why Eastwood is spending the decade following his twilight years making borderline direct-to-streaming films and self aware enough to serve as a capstone to a directorial filmography that now spans 40 pictures. All while offering the kind of solidly entertaining night at the movies for adults that Eastwood had spent his entire career delivering.
Not only does the film rise to the occasion, it soars past it. A throwback character study that invokes the kind of mid-budget hits that kept the lights on at Warner Bros. for 50 years, “Juror #2” both enriches our understanding of the Hollywood icon who made it and stands on its own as one of the best studio films released in 2024.
If Eastwood’s acting career is defined by his rugged charm, his directorial output is most notable for its empathy. Many of his masterpieces exist within the tension between his crusty old man persona and his undeniable ability to put himself in the shoes of the people his characters claim to hate. His most simplistic films are criticized for giving heroes too much credit for reaching bare minimum levels of empathy far too late in life, while his best works showcase our capacity for prejudice so fully that its limitations and shortcomings are placed on full display.
Count “Juror #2” among the latter group. Opening with broad strokes of patriotism that paint the American legal system in a euphoric light, it descends into a study of the ways that an imperfect system can be made even less perfect by the mortals tasked with running it. Yet it’s more interested in giving everyone the benefit of the doubt than casting blame on any individual person or group. Even in the film’s darkest moments, Eastwood and screenwriter Jonathan Abrams beg us to consider the possibility that our enemies are doing their best to get through the day without veering too far from their own definition of a good person, only to remind us how short of those ideals we’re each capable of falling. “Juror #2” argues that nobody should be defined by their mistakes, but we can’t move on from them without admitting to ourselves that we’ll never be fully liberated from our pasts.
Like everybody who has ever been called for jury duty, Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult) can’t believe how bad the timing is. With his wife (Zoey Deutch) entering the third trimester of a high risk pregnancy as he balances a full time job and newfound sobriety, the last thing he needs is another distraction. When he shows up in court, all he wants to do is find a way to offend the judge and get himself dismissed in time to be home for dinner. Instead, he finds himself roped into a murder trial that could suck up weeks of his life.
It seems that everyone in the courtroom is eager to send James Sythe (Gabriel Basso) to prison before the trial even begins. A former gang member with a reputation for being a violent drunk, James is accused of murdering his ex-girlfriend after a very public fight at a dive bar. Multiple witnesses saw him screaming at her and breaking glass bottles in her vicinity when an argument got heated. She left, he followed, and the next morning she was found dead near the bar with autopsy reports suggesting blunt force trauma.
While everyone else sees an open-and-shut case, Justin’s life flashes before his eyes. The recovering alcoholic had come dangerously close to relapsing at that same bar on the same night, ordering a drink and staring at it for an hour before leaving without taking a sip. Driving home in a pouring rainstorm, he hit something that he thought was a deer. But as evidence is presented in court, he begins to realize that he’s a guilty man with the authority to send an innocent one to prison on his behalf.
The trial is further complicated by an aggressive prosecutor (Toni Collette), who sees this conviction as key to her campaign as district attorney, and 11 other jurors who approach the case with their own biases and ambitions. As Justin seeks a way to clear James’ name without sullying his own, each participant in the trial is forced to find their own definition of doing the right thing. With a baby on the way, is there really any moral high ground in turning himself in and damning his wife to go through life alone? To make his child grow up without a father? Would a mistrial that kept an innocent man out of prison be worth depriving a murdered woman’s parents of their need for closure? Hell, is it even a productive use of jurors’ time to devote weeks of their life to a trial while their kids miss them at home?
These questions are genuinely compelling because Eastwood and Abrams treat each member of their ensemble with the nuance and humanity of a protagonist. Even the smallest characters are burdened by their own experience, obligations, and ideology to the point where it’s hard to accuse anyone of acting in bad faith. To the extent that the film indulges in sentimentality, it’s only in service of its argument that human beings are endlessly complicated but fundamentally decent if you’re willing to dig far enough below the surface. It’s anchored by a modern understanding that many people are just trying to survive the day, but underscored by an Old Hollywood insistence that we still ought to measure ourselves against larger ideas of right and wrong.
Eastwood’s visual ambitions are limited — he’s always worked quickly, but even the relatively spry 84-year-old that directed “American Sniper” would have composed a few of these shots more elegantly — but his mastery of storytelling fundamentals is as solid as ever. He understands that the human actor is the most valuable asset that filmmakers have at their disposal, often opting to let Hoult’s face do the heavy lifting with endless close-ups that show him processing his moral dilemma in real time. And while Eastwood certainly deserves credit for the smooth pacing, the most impressive part of the movie might be his restraint. Rather than the kind of indulgent expressionism to which so many of his peers devote their late-career works, “Juror #2” often feels like the latest example of Eastwood doing what he does best: identifying a tight script, assembling a stellar cast, and getting the hell out of the way.
Still, Eastwood’s DNA is all over the film, which only becomes richer when viewed in the larger context of his life. While “Juror #2” introduces a reverence for law, order, and due process that seems to suit a lifelong conservative, it eventually reveals a more apolitical patriotism that’s uniquely Eastwoodian. Surface-level love of country gives way to a reflection on fundamentally American ideas that pre-date our two party system. The film continuously reminds us that the individual is the irreducible unit of the American political tradition; that we all bear some degree of responsibility for our own choices while being somewhat at the mercy of luck; that both good and evil actions are supposed to come with matching consequences; and that our systems of government aren’t meant to find perfect answers, but to act as checks on our fallen nature that allow us to get as close as we can. The end result feels like the work of an aging artist who spent a lifetime studying the world’s imperfections and came to the conclusion that, even when all of its faults are clearly visible, this life isn’t so bad.
Early discourse surrounding “Juror #2” often takes for granted that it will be Eastwood’s final film. But given that a photo with no less than four seals of authenticity showed Eastwood reviewing new scripts on October 15, speculation about his retirement seems more like crass (if understandable) back-of-the-napkin mortality math than an accurate description of his intentions. But even if he has more to say in the meantime, “Juror #2” exudes the certainty of an artist who knows exactly what will define him after he’s gone.
Grade: A-
A Warner Bros. release, “Juror #2” opens in select theaters on Friday, November 1.
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