Juror #2
First screened in November 2024 / Most recently screened and reviewed in July 2025
Director: Clint Eastwood. Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette, Zoey Deutch, Chris Messina, J.K. Simmons, Gabriel Basso, Cedric Yarbrough, Leslie Bibb, Adrienne C. Moore, Chikako Fukuyama, Phil Biedron, Jason Coviello, Rebecca Koon, Hedy Nasser, Drew Scheid, Onix Serrano, Amy Aquino, Zele Avradopoulos, Bria Brimmer, Francesca Eastwood, Kiefer Sutherland, KateLynn E. Newberry, Tom Thon. Screenplay: Jonathan Abrams. In Brief:
Killer premise, adroitly elaborated. Eastwood's lean direction and chilly lighting serve it, as do many well-cast actors.
VOR:④
Critique and compassion for a complex lead whom many films would treat gently. Clean direction and knotty script: two lost arts, and a great pair.
Better for sure than Mystic River. Less stylistically and structurally ambitious than Unforgiven or Million Dollar Baby, with less evident soul-searching of Eastwood's soul and legacy. Then again, Juror #2's occasional flaws in casting and execution are less costly than those in his Best Picture winners, and this movie takes better advantage than many Eastwood projects of his justly famous but often overhyped penchant for classical clarity and non-simplistic streamlining. I see a strong argument for Juror #2 as ranking among Eastwood's very best, most coherent and coherently realized films. Its absence from most of the year-end industry honor rolls in all categories looks even weirder now than it already did last winter. (Does even Sean Baker or Coralie Fargeat think they wrote as strong an original script as this one?) Grade:A–
