This is not the first time that veteran Clint Eastwood has directed a trial film, at least in part. If the classic form is somewhat his trademark, the filmmaker brings a new stone to the building with an unexpected plot carried by Nicholas Hoult, who has the wind in his sails (soon in Nosferatu et Superman) and the talented Toni Collette (Nightmare Alley).
While we believed that with Cry Macho in 2021, the filmmaker had shot his last opus, Clint Eastwood returns in great form with Juror #2. Revolving around the theme of the watered sprinkler, the film distills a strange suspense around a juror who reveals himself to be behind the crime he is supposed to judge: astonishing.
While his wife is expecting their first child, Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult) is called to serve as a juror in the trial of a man accused of killing his partner on the side of a road with his car. When the facts are stated, Justin realizes that having believed he had been hit by a deer on the same road that same day, he could well be responsible for this death.
At 94 years old, Clint Eastwood has lost none of his dexterity in renewing the beautiful classicism that nourishes his rich filmography. It exceeds with Juror #2 the expected forms of the trial film, by questioning the character of Justin Kemp, as to his own guilt, and his duty to denounce himself to free an innocent man whom he is supposed to judge. Clint Eastwood's umpteenth meditation on the meaning of justice. From this storm under a skull, from this case of conscience, the filmmaker extracts a metaphysical dimension on the responsibility for the actions of a man confronted with himself, with others and with the society he is supposed to represent.
If many trial films take place for the most part in the courtroom, Clint Eastwood keeps moving from the courtroom to the evocation of the drama, then to Justin's life with his pregnant wife, soon to be freed, and to his confessions to his lawyer. The site of the tragedy and the vision of the victim in the stream haunt Justin Kemp, and make him return to the scene of the accident, as if obsessed.
Clint Eastwood shares with his renowned talent the disrupted psyche of his character played by a brilliant Nicholas Hoult, opposite the prosecutor who has the features of Toni Collette, remarkable for her sobriety and a tangible woman of justice. Under the camera of the filmmaker at his best, the story of a man at a crossroads who stakes his life on the line, and whose decision to reveal himself or not to others and to society will determine the fate.
Genre: Drame/Thriller
Director : Clint Eastwood
Actors: Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette, Zoey Deutch, Kiefer Sutherland, Leslie Bibb, Chris Messina, Gabriel Basso, J.K. Simmons
Pays :UNITED STATES
Duration : 1h54
Sortie : October 30, 2024
Distributer : Warner Bros. France
Synopsis : When a man finds himself a juror in a murder trial, he discovers that he is behind this criminal act. He finds himself facing a moral dilemma between protecting himself or giving himself up.
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