Clint Eastwood (Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby, Gran Torino) directs this legal thriller written by Jonathan A. Abrams about journalist Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult), who’s selected to serve on the jury of a high-profile murder trial. As the trial begins, he realizes he may have been involved. (98 min.)
Glen: Clint Eastwood is a terrific, gifted, and wholly adept director, and this new thriller explores the moral quandary Kemp finds himself in. The recovering alcoholic has a baby on the way with wife Allison (Zoey Deutch). His life has turned around and his future is bright. However, he just happened to nearly relapse in the bar where the victim, Kendall Carter (Francesca Eastwood), had a fight with her boyfriend, James Sythe (Gabriel Basso), the man now on trial for her murder, on the very night Kendall died. After leaving the bar without drinking, Kemp realized he hit something with his car. He got out, looked around, saw nothing, and assumed he grazed a deer that ran off. Now sitting in the courtroom hearing the evidence, he realizes it might not have been a deer after all. So begins a series of choices he makes as he weighs putting an innocent man in prison versus saving himself from detection.
Anna: What are the chances, right? While a whole lot of things have to first go wrong and then go right for Kemp to be in this situation, he wields a secret that comes with more power than any one jury member should have. He’s got the choice of confessing, which he discusses with his lawyer and AA companion, Larry (Keifer Sutherland), swaying the jury to find Sythe innocent, or putting an innocent (of this crime, anyway) man in prison. Things get complicated when it’s revealed that there’s a retired detective (J.K. Simmons) on the jury who starts to poke into the circumstances of the crime and finds that the likelihood of a hit and run may outweigh a domestic assault. While Kemp manages to mitigate that threat, it doesn’t stop prosecutor Faith Killebrew (Toni Colette) from pursuing the truth and alerting Kemp’s wife, Allison, to the fact that his incident with the deer all those months back may not have been so innocent. It’s pretty gripping.
Glen: It’s also complicated by Killebrew’s political ambitions. She’s up for reelection, and she’s hoping a conviction in this case will assure she remains district attorney. Meanwhile, Sythe’s public defender, Eric Resnick (Chris Messina), is overworked and frankly doing a poor job of proving an alternate theory to the DA’s domestic violence argument. Why couldn’t it have been a hit-and-run? Why not more thoroughly challenge the state’s eyewitness, who couldn’t possibly have seen clearly that night? Like 12 Angry Men (1957), we witness the machinations in the deliberation room. The jurors are tired and want to get it over with, and most initially favor conviction. I sympathized with Kemp up to a point. Obviously, the right thing to do would be to tell the truth, but as his AA sponsor Larry explains, with his previous DUIs and history as a drunk, no one will believe he left the bar sober, and it was all a simple accident. It truly is an impossible situation with no easy answer.
Anna: It certainly brings to light the uncomfortable truth: Justice in the hands of human beings is flawed and imperfect. There are no winners here. The film does a great job at conveying the discomfort of it all. While the circumstances are certainly ginned up for the big screen, the fact is that wrongful convictions happen all the time. Eastwood’s direction pays homage to 12 Angry Men while subtly marrying the consequences of conscience and self-preservation. It’s definitely worth a watch.
New Times Senior Staff Writer Glen Starkey and freelancer Anna Starkey write Sun Screen. Comment at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Jan 2-12, 2025.