Tuesday, February 24, 2009

12 Angry Men

Well, This is not a review of any sort. I personally don't want to call it a review in the first place. So, It's up to the guys who are reading this to call it a review or not.
I started writing this exactly 2 seconds after the movie ended. The movie called "12 Angry Men".
Well, for starters, It's easily by any stretch of my imagination THE BEST MOVIE I've EVER SEEN.
Probably this post might be too long for you guys to read it out. But I don't think you can't write anything less for this. The running time for this movie is about 94 minutes and for 93 minutes, you get to see and hear only 12 people who are in a room. (The movie is very very old : Released in 1957 to be precise). This movie was suggested by my friend and he too had the same feelings as I have now which I am going to share with you all.
Premise of the movie: An 18 year old Hispanic, downtrodden ,poor boy is being charged with the murder of his father . The trail of the case has been going on for 3 months and everyone is convinced including the judge that the boy is guilty and requests the members of the jury to come to a final verdict on the case. Well, for those of you who don't know how the American judicial system works, you can have a look at it @ : http://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/gov/overview1197.pdf . Well It's 3 page pdf which gives you a pretty much decent know how of the system is. I can't go on telling about the system here. But , all I can tell is that , the 12 member jury selected by the judge and the prosecuters + defendant lawyers are normal people from across different sections of the society with no celebrity status attached to them.
Well, here goes the story (Or rather a part of it, because I want you guys to watch it). The boy as told earlier is charged with murder of his father and the reason for this act is defined to be that the father hit the boy several times and in a fit of rage he stabbed his father and ran away.
Now, there are clinching evidences against him with a woman across the street seeing him kill his father and an old man living exactly below the apartment , hearing all the screaming from the boy that he is going to kill, then hearing the thud of a body falling down on the floor and then actually seeing the boy running away.Another evidence was that of a shop owner 2 blocks from the house of the scene that he had sold a very unique kind of knife with an unusual bottom handle which according to him is the only one available with him and the boy had actually purchased it from him, the previous night.All that the boy had to say to defend himself was that he was not in the house at that time and the knife which he used had fallen off the hole of his Trouser pocket while he was going.
That said, it's now the time when the jury members come in to decide and give a verdict which if the boy found guilty will be sentenced to death, otherwise of course acquitted.
All the jury members gather around in a room and start with a simple process of voting for the decision. Now, one would assume that all of them would vote for the boy being guilty. Well, actually that's the thing that happens...almost. 11 of them vote for the boy being guilty and only one guy abstains from voting the boy as guilty. Now, before you jump to any conclusions, he doesn't tell that the boy is not guilty. All he tells is, that he doesn't know for sure. He can see clearly that the evidences are sufficient enough, but what if there's a doubt in any corner of the case? what if the defendants did not gather sufficient information. He is ready to vote as the boy being guilty, but he just wants to have a discussion before coming to a conclusion.
Phew!!! That's long isn't it. Well, that's all I can disclose about the story line of the movie. You see the rest.
Now, coming to the point of why actually I am writing this blog, I was so impressed by the characters being portrayed, the way the each guy's individual character comes out and how they reason about the case is impressive to say the least. The variety of jury members you have is amazing, one is a watch maker, one works at an ad-agency,other is an architect, another one a retired old man, another one is a painter who earns 3$ per day painting houses, another is a guy who comes from a poor background, another one guy is an ill-tempered man whose son had run away from the house after having a fight with him , another one is a man who firmly believes in facts and talks about the case by presenting nothing but facts, another one has baseball tickets and wants to go and watch the game, so he is always with the majority, since he wants this thing to be over asap , another is a grumpy old guy who is terribly rich and always believes that people from slums always lie, steal and kill . Given this wide charecteristics, they go on presenting their reasons and arguements as to why should this boy be punished.
It's hard to miss out even a minor scene in the movie, like, when the guys take a break and head to the loo, you feel that there's going to be nothing worth watching in there, but as you begin to think , one of the guys makes an important statement. It's that gripping.

I end with this , so that you feel something incomplete about this post and go and watch it. Well, this is my opinion. You may or may not like it. But all I can say is: I liked it a lot. Watch it, let me know if all the things I said were worth it .


Chao!!
Auf Wiedersehen!!

P.S : Pardon me for any grammatical errors. With the post being as long as it is, it was difficult for me to check it thoroughly. If you find any, lemme know :)

3 comments:

Unknown said...

oh, impressive... 2day r 2maro i wll wath it... then i share my complete veiw on it...

Abhi said...

Hi Mr/Ms aerogramme...
Thanks for your comments, but would you please let me know something more about you??

Unknown said...

hi Abhi garu..
this is Mr.Aerogramme... i am your blog fallower !