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Juror No. 2 Movie Review

Juror No. 2 is a 2024 courtroom drama film directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Nicholas Hoult and Toni Collette. It’s a rather disappointing movie.

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“We’re only as sick as our secrets“

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A juror for a high-profile murder trial finds himself struggling with a serious moral dilemma that could influence the verdict and potentially convict or free the accused killer. I’d expected a lot from this movie as the premise is fantastic and the cast is tremendous. But the end result ended up being quite a letdown. It’s a solid film, don’t get me wrong, but one that was undone by its rather flawed execution.

I gravitate toward sophisticated courtroom dramas where the dilemmas are thorny and the dialogue is thought-provoking. But here only on the surface did the story seem clever. I had a big issue with how obvious and on-the-nose every single conversation sounded like. These issues of morality and personal responsibility deserved a much more nuanced and subtler exploration than what we got here.

Nicholas Hoult was reliably terrific as such an interesting character. We do not get to see him developed all that much, but Hoult elevated him deftly. A lot of focus was given to his facial expressions through numerous close-ups that further accentuated the character’s moral dilemma and guilt.

Toni Collette was another standout. Her Southern accent was at first difficult to get accustomed to, but she once again delivered stellar work. I loved all of her scenes and the moments between these two characters, but ultimately it was disappointing that those scenes were quite sparse. There was a missed opportunity to focus more on the cat and mouse game that could have been extraordinary if done right.

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Juror No. 2 also failed to properly develop any of the other characters. This strong cast of performers did not get much to do here with the worst offender being J. K. Simmons who only got a handful of little scenes. I loved the ambiguous ending that was was a perfect closure to this type of story, but the remainder of the storyline was quite safe and predictable. Eastwood’s directing is also very safe and he failed to imbue the movie with any interesting visual flourishes, but he also failed to include sophisticated dialogue. The political complexities were very much appreciated here, but the depiction of everyone being biased and incompetent was somewhat irresponsible and unrealistic.