At 94, Clint Eastwood has nothing to prove. For the better part of 50 years, he has cemented himself as one of the world’s biggest movie stars. With a filmography full of great films, the Hollywood legend is also a fine actor (who grew better with age) and one hell of a director. Cast and crew have long praised his easy-going manner on set and the old pro is said to have the most stress free sets in the business. With a shelf full of Oscars for his efforts on 1992’s Unforgiven and 2004’s Million Dollar Baby, Eastwood has long challenged himself as a filmmaker, traversing different types of dramas and thrillers and the occasional Western; finding artistic and commercial success most times out of the gate. Audiences love him and critics revere him. Never one to slow down, it has been said that his latest, Juror #2, could be his last. If this is true and ol’ Clint doesn’t have another one in him, it makes the failure of this one hurt even more. 

As he did with his 1999 thriller, True Crime, Eastwood takes on the justice system, using Juror #2 to point a stern finger at the accountability and shaky moral platitudes of the hallowed halls within our courts. A noble undertaking to be sure. The good news is that Eastwood can still handle a multi-character piece with old school style. His direction here is polished and doesn’t get in the way of the actors or the story. The bad news is that most of the cast (beyond star Nicholas Hoult) flounders around with clunky dialogue in search of something interesting to do. The ugly news is that Jonathan A. Abrams’ screenplay is incredibly dull, filled with unforgivable clichés, and at times, absolutely preposterous. 

Nicholas Hoult is Justin Kemp, a Savannah, Georgia magazine writer and recovering alcoholic who is expecting a baby with his wife, Ally (Zoey Deutch). While the young couple is dealing with a high risk pregnancy (a plot device that goes nowhere), Justin is selected to serve on the jury for the murder trial of James Sythe (Gabriel Basso), a man accused of killing his girlfriend and dumping her body in a roadside gulch. The ridiculous twist being that Justin could actually be the one to have run her over one dark and rainy night. This is no spoiler, as the film’s trailers reveal the absurd coincidence.

Such a high profile case could send the prosecuting attorney Faith Killbrew (Toni Collette, constantly grimacing and struggling with something that resembles a southern accent) to a win for the District Attorney seat. She is dead set on seeing the boyfriend behind bars. The case seems to be open and shut, as there are many witnesses who saw him in a heated argument with his girlfriend, Kendall (Francesca Eastwood) as the two made a scene in a bar near where the murder occurred. Public defender Erik Resnick (a bland Chris Messina), feels his client is indeed innocent and fights hard with Killbrew to win the case.

As the jurors (stock characters, all) are sequestered and the attorneys wait, Justin struggles with the moral dilemma of turning himself in and losing his family or letting an innocent man take the fall. The case and film drone on while Justin works hard to convince his fellow jurors that Sythe is innocent. 

One could write a dissertation on the ridiculous mess that is Juror #2’s screenplay. Abrams seemed too concerned with the “will he or won’t he”, that he shucked his responsibilities to make the story cohesive and believable. One of the biggest mistakes is the fact that Justin had not heard of this case nor the crime, even though it is national news and is the talk of the Savannah area. For a lifestyle writer for a major publication, one would think this crackerjack wordsmith would have caught wind of it somehow. 

The jury is written as if they were in a spoof of a television show such as Matlock or Muder, She Wrote. The great J.K. Simmons is wasted as a retired homicide detective who wants to solve this on his own. Cedric Yarborough’s clichéd angry black man wants to see this southern trash white man go to jail whether he is innocent or not. Adrienne C. Moore is the offensively designed “Yolanda”, a sassy black female bus driver who feels borrowed from a Tyler Perry movie. Add to that an Asian woman who happens to be a med student, a stoner hippie dude (how the hell did he get chosen?) and an awful Leslie Bibb as a preposterously upbeat and sunny stay-at-home mom who offers herself as the foreperson, due to the fact that she has held the position on two previous cases and you have one of most dreadful courtroom thrillers ever made. The dialogue and performances inside that jury room are something to behold. Each moment is so excruciatingly bad they become a source of unintended laughs, if one can stay awake long enough to experience them. 12 Angry Men this is not.

Lest we forget, Keifer Sutherland tries to class up the proceedings as Justin’s sponsor from AA. Guess what? He is also an attorney! Isn’t that fantastic? Justin seeks his free counsel, as Sutherland shows up for a few scenes to spew bland dialogue and bad advice that no reputable attorney would ever give. At one point, the movie is done with his character and the actor literally walks out of the picture. 

The film is competently made. Yves Bélanger’s camera gives every scene a naturalistic look and Ronald R. Reiss’s production design is first rate, but the saddest truth about Juror #2 is that there is nothing interesting to stimulate its audience. We have been here a thousand times before and in much better films. The politics in Eastwood’s hopefully-not swan song as director speak to the social climate of today. With the right text, the old pro could have found himself with something profound and relevant. Unfortunately, screenwriter Jonathan A. Abrams was not the man for the job and chokes the life out of his story with goofy dramatics, bad dialogue, and an eye-rolling ambiguity that, by film’s end, should induce angry reactions from the audience.  

A silly and boring courtroom thriller, Juror #2 is as naive as it is ludicrously contrived. Let us hope Clint Eastwood has one more in him. A respected career such as his simply cannot end like this.

Juror #2

Written by Jonathan A. Abrams

Directed by Clint Eastwood

Starring Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette, Zoey Deutch, Leslie Bibb, J.K. Simmons, Keifer Sutherland

PG-13, 113 Minutes, Warner Brothers Pictures, Malpaso, Dichotomy Films