What is justice?
For as long as Clint Eastwood has been making movies—which is to say, a very long time—that question has occupied him more than any other.
In 1973’s High Plains Drifter, he told the story of an almost ghost-like figure who came into town to bring it together against a gang of enemies. More recently, in Richard Jewell, he examined the life of a man wrongly convicted in the media for a public crime he did not commit. Eastwood’s most famous quote as an actor—”Do you feel lucky, punk?”—is a gruff nod to the vagaries of fate and the ambiguities of justice. In Unforgiven, probably his best film, he told the story of a retired killer brought back for one more hit. The movie’s most memorable line was something of a mission statement for the filmmaker: “Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.”
Clint Eastwood makes movies about how we don’t always get what we deserve. Luck, fate, and the menace and decency of other men mean humans are never fully in control of our own lives. The question is what choices people make with whatever life hands them.
So it is in his latest, and possibly last, film, Juror #2, a tricky, nuanced thriller about a man caught in a justice system conundrum. The title refers to the number given to Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult), a soon-to-be father whose wife is in the midst of a high-risk pregnancy. Kemp is selected to be a juror on the trial of James Sythe (Gabriel Basso), who is charged with murdering his girlfriend after an argument at a bar, then dumping her body in a creek.
Sythe has all the signs of a killer: a tough demeanor, neck tattoos, and a former life in a drug-running gang. He looks the part.
But Kemp soon realizes his own culpability in the case: On the night the woman died, he stopped by the bar in question, bought a drink he didn’t touch, and then on the drive home hit what he thought was a deer at the exact spot where the woman’s body was found. Kemp could just admit this. But he has a history of alcoholism, and a jury would surely judge him harshly. And remember—he has a baby on the way. Kemp, then, holds another man’s life in his hands, judging him for a crime he knows he didn’t commit.
There’s something quasi-mythical about the scenario. It’s a morality tale, a fable built atop a precariously balanced premise about the difficulty of achieving justice and trying to do the right thing.
It’s also the vehicle that Eastwood uses to explore the flaws of the American justice system itself, especially the jury system.
After the trial, Kemp and his fellow jurors are tasked with deciding Sythe’s fate, and nearly all of them want to convict him immediately. This is partly because they believe he’s guilty, but partly because they simply want to go home. It’s a burden on them to spend even a single day, much less weeks, deliberating over this man’s fate—never mind that the defendant could spend his entire life in jail as a result of their decisions.
Indeed, Sythe only went to trial because he insisted, over the objections of his own lawyer, a lowly public defender. The local prosecutor offered his lawyer a plea deal, which he turned down, meaning he’s facing what’s known as a “trial penalty,” in which his sentence, if convicted, will be far longer simply because he exercised his constitutional right to a trial. Meanwhile, the prosecutor, Faith Killebrew (Toni Collette) is running for reelection, and thus has an incentive to go hard against Sythe. The jurors themselves are more personally compromised than they should be. As the trial proceeds, Killebrew and the judge repeatedly refer to the small local system’s resource shortages.
The system, in other words, puts burdens on everyone involved, gives them perverse incentives, and strains state resources and human patience. Both Sythe and Kemp deserve better. But this is a Clint Eastwood movie, and a good one at that. Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.
Speaking of which: What does Eastwood himself deserve? Now in his mid-90s, the director has been making movies for Warner Brothers (W.B.) for decades, and Juror #2 is probably his swan song. While not every film he’s made has been a hit, many have, and he’s brought in well over a billion dollars in box office revenue for the studio. But W.B. has decided to give Juror #2 a paltry theatrical release, just 50 theaters with minimal marketing.
The decision to bury the film is reportedly predicated on studio executives’ belief that a smart, adult-skewing, contemporary court thriller like this won’t play in the current theatrical environment. Maybe it’s a sound business decision, though if so, that’s a depressing thought about the state of the movies. But whatever it is, it’s not justice.
