Juror #2 is supposedly Clint Eastwood’s final film. And after more than six decades in the industry and 40 films under his belt as director, the 94-year-old Hollywood icon has more than earned his retirement. But you’d expect a filmmaker as renowned as Eastwood to get a more celebratory rollout than what Juror #2 is receiving. The official website for Juror #2 has the film listed to play in a measly 18 markets in North America. (Update: Warner Bros. has stated to Inverse that Juror #2 is “releasing in the U.S., U.K., France, Spain, Italy and Germany with the full support of Warner Bros.”) There was barely a press tour, despite the film’s star-studded cast, including Nicholas Hoult, J.K. Simmons, and Toni Collette. As of this writing, Warner Bros. Discovery didn’t even try to opt for the awards push, giving the film an early premiere at the AFI Fest... five days before its release. What gives?
For this kind of hush-hush release, you’d expect the movie to be mediocre or disappointing in some way. And sure, Eastwood’s last few films have fallen short of expectations — Cry Macho, Richard Jewell, The Mule, and almost all of his films for the past decade were mostly fine to boring — but that’s not the case at all for Juror #2.
A courtroom thriller starring Hoult as a man who slowly realizes he may have a harrowing connection to the trial he’s on a jury for, Juror #2 is easily Eastwood’s best film in nearly a decade. A taut, ruthlessly efficient piece of filmmaking, Juror #2 is predicated on a deceptively simple premise: What if a juror realized he was the real murderer? Eastwood patiently explores every psychological and legal avenue that this premise yields and spins it into a masterful courtroom drama that feels like a throwback in many ways.
The film establishes Hoult’s Justin Kemp as the typical suburban husband. His wife Allison (Zoe Deutch) is about to give birth, they’re beloved by the kids at the school they work at and supported by their close circle of friends, and they live in a nice big house. The only real tension in their lives seems to come from Allison’s high-risk pregnancy and the fact that Justin’s jury duty will take him away from her during a crucial time. But as Justin is chosen to be on the jury for a murder trial, Juror #2 slowly reveals more and more about Justin, his guilt, and his troubled past, ramping up the suspense until the viewer — like Justin — is liable to explode.
The trial is for the murder of Kendall Carter (Francesca Eastwood), whose brutal homicide on a rainy night in October seems to have been at the hands of her boyfriend, James (Gabriel Basso). All the evidence points to him: he’s got a history of violent behavior, and witnesses saw them arguing right before Kendall’s murder. But as the prosecution goes through the evidence, Justin recalls his memories of that night — an untouched drink at the bar, a downpour that obscured his vision, and a sudden thud as his car careened through a narrow bridge. He had brushed off the incident as a deer that hit his car... but what if it wasn’t?
Hoult handily carries the film as a guilt-ridden man stuck between a rock and a hard place. He plays Justin as a sort of everyman — relatable, sympathetic, and just a touch awkward. There’s a purity to Hoult’s performance that feels very well-molded to Eastwood’s straightforward filmmaking style; it’s an earnestness that feels rare in today’s cinematic landscape. Even as the film’s second half becomes a glorified retread of 12 Angry Men (except one of the men is the culprit!), there’s a refreshing quality to the way Eastwood sincerely checks off all the boxes of a courtroom drama: the ensemble is mostly made up of archetypes (including a stoner, a sassy grandma, and an uptight housewife), Collette’s prosecutor has the deepest Southern-fried accent, and every character has a shocking fidelity to the concept of justice.
It’s not that Juror #2 is completely removed from reality — Cedric Yarbrough’s Marcus, the lone Black man on the jury, bristles when he’s questioned by the defense whether he has a history of domestic abuse — but there’s an old-fashioned quality to Juror #2. It plays like a thriller but its structure is classic melodrama. And that may be the answer to the big question of Juror #2’s strangely quiet release: in an age of superheroes, franchises, and big horror swings. Audiences just aren’t interested in a good, solid drama for adults. Or, at least, that’s what studios think.
It’s a shame that a great movie like Juror #2 is being buried when it’s exactly what audiences are craving. Last year, Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s biopic about the inventor of the atomic bomb, was one of the biggest hits at the box office. Juror #2 may be old-fashioned in its deliberate pacing and somewhat naive trust in the justice system, but it’s also old-fashioned in how it trusts its audience. It’s nice that they’re still making movies like this, though with Eastwood potentially set to retire, they might not be making them for much longer.
