A woman in a black blindfold gropes her way down a corridor in chilling silence. A man grips her arms: “Okay. You Ready?” he hisses. A blindfolded woman, her abductor: we must be in a slasher film. As the man removes the blindfold, we see that the walls feature bright painted creatures: a snail with antennae erect, a flying monkey, a swarm of butterflies. We know this trope: the children’s nursery that turns nightmare. But here she smiles and sighs, “It’s perfect! You’re perfect!” We’ve just met Justin Kemp—the young family man at the center of  Clint Eastwood’s Juror #2—surprising his pregnant wife Allison with the nursery he’s decorated for her. We’ve also just experienced, in miniature, the film’s insidious sleight of hand. Training us not to presume male guilt, the film says: Shame on you for suspecting him; shame on you for failing to see that what looks like male violence is actually love.

Juror #2 is a very bad film: so bad that, after bankrolling it, Warner Bros. tried to bury it. Why should we bother condemning it? It condemns itself. The answer is that it represents the kind of stealth attack on the rule of law that underwrites Trump’s frontal assaults on the courts, while deluding us about the worst inequities of criminal “justice.” It does this via that most powerful tool of legal ideology: popular entertainment. And it does it in ways that have so far eluded ideology critique. How can you attack the judicial system (in a moment when the courts may be our only defense against full-blown fascism) while still whitewashing the criminal justice system? It’s a challenge. But this film is the answer.

Justin has been called to jury duty for a murder trial. We learn the story of the alleged murder through flashbacks. Drinking hard at a neon-and-billiards bar called “Rowdy’s Hideaway,” James Michael Sythe and his girlfriend Kendall Carter begin to fight. The argument escalates, and James violently sweeps his arm across the counter, shooting broken glassware at Kendall. She rushes outside into the driving rain. Enraged, he runs after her and grabs her. “What’re you gonna do, hit me?” she cries. “Fine, walk home in the rain, you stupid bitch.”

What happens next? Does he get in his car and drive home? Or does he follow Kendall, bash her head in, and throw her body off Old Quarry Road? The jury must decide.

Critics have called Juror #2 a “spiritual remake” of the classic American jury-room movie: Sidney Lumet’s 1957 12 Angry Men. The film’s debt to its predecessor is hardly subtle. Its title is a riff on Lumet’s hero, “Juror #8.” And the procedures, arguments, and characters in the jury room at the film’s center offer a 21^st-century replay of those in Lumet’s film: the bigoted but secretly grieving brute, the cold scientist, the frail but righteous elder, the dumb-hipster youth, and so on (gender and racial diversity added). In both films, 11 jurors are ready to convict: no discussion needed. In both films, our hero says, “If this is somebody’s life we’re dealing with, shouldn’t we at least talk about it?” In both films, he reminds the other jurors: the accused is presumed innocent; if there’s reasonable doubt, they must acquit.

But the film isn’t really a remake. In Lumet’s film, we stay locked in the stifling jury room. In Juror #2, we wander through the streets of Savannah, where the film is set. Lumet’s Juror #8 has no first name, no world outside the courthouse, no back story: only a profession (architect) and a crisp seersucker suit. Justin, on the other hand, has a tastefully decorated middle-class home, a job in lifestyle journalism, a beautiful teacher-wife, a completed community service sentence for drunk driving, an AA chip (four years of sobriety), a sponsor, a lawyer, and—although he’s just a “regular guy” (as we’re told)—even something resembling an inner life. But most important (spoiler ahead…), there’s a key plot change. In Juror #2, we know that the defendant is innocent. We know this because Justin is the killer.

In the jury box, listening to the evidence, Justin realizes that he was at Rowdy’s Hideaway that night. More flashbacks, this time through Justin’s eyes. It is the due date of twins Allison recently miscarried. Seeking numbness, Justin orders a drink. The glass almost to his lips, he stops just in time to save his AA chip. As he drives home in the blinding rain, his phone pings. He looks down for a second and then hears a thud: he’s hit something. He stops, gets out, sees a dent in the front fender, and looks around, trying to figure out what he might have hit. In the storm, it’s impossible to see anything except a sign: “DEER XING.” It must have been a deer. He drives home. But in the jury box, Justin begins to realize: what he hit was not a deer but Kendall Carter.

In attacking law without attacking the real abuses of the criminal justice system, “Juror #2” is a groundless assault on the only institution that can save us from all-out authoritarian rule.

Warner Bros. classifies the film as “Suspense/Thriller.” But it feels more like an elongated Law & Order episode, with made-for-TV mise-en-scènes, acting styles, cinematography, and editing (all with a strangely 1990s vibe). We’re not at all surprised to see Law & Order guest star Chris Messina as the public defender.

To identify it as a Law & Order episode is not, of course, in itself a critique. But it does point to the ideological work the film is doing: its contribution to what we might call “legal theologies.” What I mean by “legal theologies” is not law’s explicitly religious doctrines (for instance, the constitutional right to freedom of religion). Instead, it’s something more like what Carl Schmitt meant by the phrase “political theology” (which for him was also legal): the belief that law is sacred; the faith in its authority (kindred in spirit to religious faith). Classic American courtroom dramas like 12 Angry Men are the bibles of that faith: they lay out its tenets and provide narratives that explain, justify, and secure belief when it founders. Those tenets include the belief that adversarial trials give both sides a fair shake, that juries eventually arrive at truth, that punishment is necessary to closure for victims, that trial procedure—while flawed—mostly gets the bad guy in the end and acquits the good.

“Mostly” is important here. Because even in classic courtroom drama, justice is imperfect and doesn’t always prevail, still less so in 21^st-century versions. In Law & Order, it wins 80 percent of the time. That 20 percent is essential: it guarantees the truth of the other 80%. It says: we know law is imperfect but, hey, it’s pretty good.

That 20 percent produces what we might call “legal countertheologies”: beliefs that seem to challenge legal theologies, but often, in fact, simply prop them up. Countertheologies are confession-and-avoidance strategies: confessions that (like religious confessions) seem to wipe clean the sin. Juror #2, for instance, effectively confesses: criminal justice is unjust. It shows us that the prosecutor’s case rests on eyewitness misidentification and prejudice, and that she pursues the case relentlessly, even after she has doubts, because she’s running for DA and needs the conviction. It also tells us—through former homicide detective Harold (the film’s moral compass)—that public defenders “wor[k] ten times the caseload of the DA’s on a fraction of the budget.” For poor defendants, “it’s just not a fair fight.”

In the film’s logic, feminism seems largely to blame: for female prosecutors’ vendettas against men; for the unfair assumption that it’s the husband or boyfriend who did it; for the fact that we don’t see that women are the problem

True. And yet, these countertheologies obscure as much as they reveal. Eyewitness misidentification is in fact responsible for more than 60% of wrongful convictions. But in Juror #2, it’s the fault of the rain and an old man eager “to be needed again,” rather than the real causes: the cross-race effect (people of a different race “all look alike”); and plea-deal accomplice testimony. Prosecutors in fact bow to electoral pressures, suppress evidence of innocence, and may seek convictions even when they have doubts. But in Juror #2, the prosecutor ends up seeking exonerating evidence. The excessive caseloads of public defenders in fact make for an unfair fight. But in Juror #2, a dedicated public defender has time both to investigate and hang out at a bar with the prosecutor, since he seems to have no other cases. Racism remains largely responsible for wrongful convictions. But in its revision of 12 Angry Men, Juror #2 replaces the dark-skinned boy, whom racism almost convicts, with a burly white man, whom feminist bias actually convicts.

In fact, in the film’s logic, feminism seems largely to blame: for female prosecutors’ vendettas against men; for the unfair assumption that it’s the husband or boyfriend who did it; for the fact that we don’t see that women are the problem. They provoke their men to violence, as the film shows us when Kendall repeatedly punches James during their fight; they then storm off whorishly drunk in the rain. If women get themselves killed—the film implies (without daring to say it directly)—it’s their own damned fault.

In its failure to show the realities of criminal justice—the kids from poor communities charged with major crimes for minor mischief, the cops who cajole them into confession, the years of waiting in jail before their cases come to trial, the solitary and lockdowns, the pressure to plead that produces 95 percent of felony convictions—in all this and more, the film lies by omission. That lie is signature Clint Eastwood: avowedly non-partisan; but committed to defying “woke” narratives. But the biggest lie is the one at the film’s faux-ethical heart: the lie that is Justin’s choice.

If Justin confesses, the prosecutor will convict him of first-degree vehicular homicide (we are told). That will destroy not only his life but his wife’s and child’s. As his lawyer tells him, “Given your history, there isn’t a jury in the world that would believe you were sober.” Justin manages to persuade five jurors that there’s reasonable doubt about James’s guilt, but one juror swears he’ll never acquit. That will lead to a hung jury: another trial; maybe an even less sympathetic jury. Justin can’t save James, the film seems to say, but he can save his family.

The whole film, in fact, acts like a rhetorical question: it seems to invite you to answer freely, but your freedom is a delusion.

Cut to the verdict: guilty; life imprisonment without parole. The film neatly skips over the only thing that could have led to this verdict: Justin must have explained to the five jurors he’d initially persuaded that he was, after all, mistaken—that there really was no doubt after all about James’s guilt.

The film tricks you into believing that this is okay: to save your family, you might occasionally have to condemn a man you know to be innocent to life imprisonment without parole. (After all, our protagonist’s name is Justin!) But Justin’s dilemma is a false one. At one point, we see him in an internet search: “What is the Maximum Sentence for Vehicular Homicide.” There are posts from two fake law firms (a reality effect): “Meier, Bernstein, & Moore Legal Services”; “Lyons, Rossi & Associates Law.” What’s also fake is the likelihood that Justin would face more than a slap on the hand. In Georgia, the State must prove a DUI charge beyond a reasonable doubt. If there’s insufficient evidence, the accused can’t be found guilty of first-degree vehicular homicide.

To give a real-world example, in a 2024 Georgia case, a demonstrably drunk 68-year-old man hit and killed a 17-year-old honors student. He’d had open beer cans in the car and boasted in jail recordings about how much he’d drunk that night. The man was found guilty of a misdemeanor and sentenced to one extra day in jail. Justin—a far more appealing defendant driving in heavy rain with no beer in his car—would be unlikely to serve even that day.

Why would a film critique the legal system now? And why in this way? Eastwood seems to view himself as an iconoclast. But his iconoclasm is, in fact, the new orthodoxy, aligned with that of  Trump, who has “declar[ed] war on the nation’s federal judiciary, the country’s legal profession and the rule of law” (as one Bush–appointed judge recently put it). In attacking law without attacking the real abuses of the criminal justice system, Juror #2 is a groundless assault on the only institution that can save us from all-out authoritarian rule. Its method is similar to that of the right-wing justices on the Supreme Court: It uses the tools of Left cultural critique to unravel the claims of the Left. This film is more subtle, of course, than our current government. At its center is not a bloated autocrat and a posse of fawning thugs but a gentle journalist: different cast; same ideas. That makes it all-the-more dangerous.

In the last moments of the film, as Justin and Allison coo over their baby, the prosecutor approaches their house with a look of grim determination. She knocks. Justin goes to the door. They stare at each other, in what feels like an endless series of shot/reverse shots. What will happen?

We don’t know, because the screen goes black and the credits roll. It’s an attempt to redeem the film: surely with such ambiguity the film can’t be total trash. The ending seems to say: You are Juror #13; decide for yourself. But that too is a blind. For the whole film demands that we identify with Justin, and we know that she’s coming to get him.

We know this because a few scenes earlier, just after the verdict, the prosecutor finds Justin on a bench outside the courthouse. She clearly knows the truth, and they speak of it in thinly coded third person. “He’s a good person,” says Justin. “He has a family depending on him.” “And what about justice?” she asks. “Well, sometimes the truth isn’t justice,” he answers. If she pursues him, he says, “a good man and his family will be just destroyed. Where is the justice in that?”

That rhetorical question hangs over the final scene. A good man, a “regular guy,” will be destroyed: Where’s the justice in that? The whole film, in fact, acts like a rhetorical question: it seems to invite you to answer freely, but your freedom is a delusion. The ethical question the film asks us to engage through Justin’s war with himself is (to quote Harold) “just not a fair fight.” The winner has been decided from the very beginning. 

Credit: Juror #2 / IMDB