12 Angry Men - Brandy

12 Angry Men

My first thought while popping this movie into the dvd player was "Wasn't this based on a play?" Which it was. Which gets me thinking two ways: Huzzah for plays being meaningful to the masses and Was it adapted well? Adapting something from the stage to film is difficult and vice versa. Besides one cheesy stage moment where every character has to take a meaningful pose looking away from a bigot going on a rant, it did well.

So let's get going! Some judge is rambling about reasonable doubt and I'm on my first glass of Cabernet from a Black Box. Next thing we know, we're stuck in a jury room for an hour and a half, and in black and white no less. The claustrophobia of this room and the tightly packed men of various anger inside is wonderfully done and easy to envision on stage as well as on film. I've seen horror movies that never achieved this wonderful degree of panic and tightness in a space.

Even before I can sit back and let the soothing waves of wine and testosterone wash over me, the feminist inside me shouts "Hey, we had suffrage in the 20s, shouldn't this should be An Angry Assortment of 12 Men and Women?" I guess this was the 50s and if we had some woman on the jury she might have been moaning about the laundry piling up or how scary violence is or worrying about the roast or whatever zombie-induced stereo-type women were supposed to be. Feminist rant over.

All in all, I really liked this movie. I had previously seen the Veronica Mars tribute episode "One Angry Veronica" so that actually gave a surprisingly accurate plotline for this movie. Both start with one juror not convinced of guilt who slowly work on the others with clear (sometimes sassy) logic. Have one guy obsessed with sports in each, have one bigot rant about poor people and ultimately have a big ole happy ending. 12 Angry Men was clearly better, despite Kristin Bell being much hotter than Henry Fonda.

Take Aways:
- If a fellow juror tells you about how his teenage son let him down, that juror is gonna be a dick about it later to unrelated teenage boys
- Old people are damn dirty liars
- The only woman mentioned in this movie is a damn dirty liar
- Every bigot has long rehearsed monologues explaining his viewpoint memorized and is itching to throw that out
- Heat makes men angrier
- Guys with glasses are always geeky or very logical
- A Jury of average Americans will always have a lot of lazy idiots
- The Jury parts of courtrooms are generally not as interesting as watching Horatio Caine put on his sunglasses
- Don't trust whitey

Rating (without alcohol): 4 Stars
Rating (with alcohol): 4 Stars

-Brandy