My Movie Collection

12 Angry Men is a 1997 teleplay adapted from the Reginald Rose teleplay of the same title.

The film is centered around twelve jurors who are deliberating a murder trial. The defendant is the teenage son of an abusive murdered father. After a particularly emotional confrontation, one evening, the defendant receives a slap across his face by his father, for reasons not directly stated in the movie. The defendant leaves his home and goes to a movie. He returns later and finds his father stabbed to death and police arrest him for the murder. The defendant is known for carrying the stiletto knife used in the stabbing and two eyewitnesses were known to have seen the defendant run from the apartment after the stabbing.

At the start of the film, most are ready to find the young, Hispanic defendant guilty. However, one juror, played by Jack Lemmon, wishes to be thorough and starts to review all of the evidence. He demonstrates that the knife used in the stabbing, claimed to be rare by the prosecution, could be purchased readily blocks from where the defendant lived. The group determine the testimonies by the two witnesses to be questionable. One witness who claims to have actually seen the defendant stab his father suffered from poor eyesight. It is also mentioned that the murdered father had gambling debts, which could possibly be the actual reason he was killed.

This one juror slowly convinces the other jurors that a reasonable doubt exists that the boy committed the murder and therefore a not guilty verdict should be rendered. The jurors go through fits of anger, lack of understanding, and even mild violence before concluding their deliberations and settling on a final verdict.