Clint Eastwood's ‘Juror #2’ has an interesting premise, but gets dulled down by lazy procedural storytelling
Overwrought acting doesn’t help the legend's last directorial effort.
Clint Eastwood movies used to be an event that few would want to miss. Movies like Absolute Power and A Perfect World won’t find the accolades of Unforgiven and Mystic River or Million Dollar Baby, but they were effective thrillers with a compelling premise.
Eastwood’s latest (and supposedly last) movie, Juror #2, carries an intriguing premise, but falters when it comes to making people care about the protagonist or ending. Nicholas Hoult’s lead character, Justin Kemp, finds himself on a jury for a trial that’s prosecuting a young man (STL native, Gabriel Basso) for the murder of his girlfriend (Francesca Eastwood) on a rainy night after a rough night in a bar.
The problem for Justin is that the fateful night rings too many bells, as in a memory of him hitting something (or someone?) with his car by a creek where the woman’s body was found. Mix that with an alcoholic history and the suspicion would be on if anyone else on the jury knew what really happened that night, like an ex-cop (an underused J.K. Simmons) serving alongside Justin who wants to pry into a hit and run possibility. Justin is all alone in the knowledge of his (potential) actions.
A cast including Toni Collette and Kiefer Sutherland with a setup like that should have fared better than Juror #2 did for me. This is a completely harmless yet forgettable movie that is short-circuited by overwrought acting and a highly dull aesthetic. Oh, and the screenplay took that juicy story and ended up punting. Every scene is played so serious and elementarily, that you expect a Law and Order theme to begin after every cut. We’re talking about TV show crime procedural makeup with lots of derivative tread on the storytelling tires.
Hoult is a talented actor when he’s not playing a straight-laced character. While we never find out exactly what happened on that one night, we know from the jump that Justin isn’t a bad guy. He’s a guy who has made poor choices while trying to walk a straight line, and Hoult can’t do much with that. He’s better when playing the leader of a bank-robbing white supremacist gang (this December’s The Order) or a cold-blooded assassin (Taylor Sheridan’s Those Who Wish Me Dead) or Lex Luthor in James Gunn’s upcoming Superman movie, characters with an angle and some depth.
Simmons, Collette, Sutherland, and a few other notable faces take swings on flat material, often coming up short of their usual ability. It’s not like they aren’t taking swings; it’s just not making an impact. The rest of the cast is filled out by cliched types; performances that don’t really register afterwards.
Eastwood’s lack of a stamp with his movies is the most disappointing part of Juror #2. Outside of Richard Jewell and Sully, the directing has carried all the flavor of a sandwich from a vending machine since his last big one ten years ago with American Sniper. 15:17 to Paris, The Mule, Cry Macho, Jersey Boys, and J. Edgar are a collective brick banging off the rim. Age can surely wither away a filmmaker’s message and overall ability to churn out a great movie, something to consider with the 94-year-old legend.
He could have retired after Sniper or Jewell, and filled up his accolade jaw for life-but he kept going, and the results haven’t been anywhere near stellar. There’s nothing wrong with watching Juror #2, and the final shot may stir something inside of you. For me, it gathered some steam in the second half, but ran out of runtime to truly climb into my heart and make some noise.
The Film Buffa Rating: 2/5