After he is picked for jury duty, Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult) comes to a horrible realization.
The man whose fate he is supposed to decide is innocent of the crime.
Kemp who knows the truth of what happened - because he is the reason an innocent man is in the dock…
If this is the final Clint Eastwood picture, it is a great final statement.
A depressing, pessimistic one, but powerful all the same.
A moral quandary for the central character becomes a broader reflection on the imperfections of the justice system.
Shot in Eastwood’s clean, unobtrusive style, the film moves with deliberation toward the central character’s final, pivotal moral choice.
In the lead, Hoult is excellent. One of the best actors of his generation, he deserves to get more roles like this - an ordinary man slowly getting himself deeper and deeper into a quagmire he could pull out of at any time.
The supporting cast are all terrific. JK Simmons is great as a potential white knight who ends up making no impact.
The fact that I am watching this on a laptop rather than in a theatre is depressing
Even a decade ago, this movie would have been a modest hit.
Even further back, it might have been a blockbuster, going toe-to-toe with the various Grisham adaptations.
In that context, its skewering of the justice system might have been treated as a twist on the genre.
In 2024-2025, it feels more despairing.
The central character will be haunted by his moral failure, but the viewer is left with a sense of broader systemic failure.
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