The kid was guilty as sin
Why the kid should have gone to the chair
Why Twelve Angry Men is liberal twaddle
The movie began as a television play of the same name, written by Reginald Rose and shown on CBS in 1954. This was just a year after the US communists Julius and Ethel Rosenberg had been executed for passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, a heavily politicised case that had aroused fierce controversy because of apparent shortcomings in the evidence against them and the poor performance of their lawyer. Reginald Rose’s play could be seen as a warning against the dangers of a mob mentality towards unpopular or marginalised figures. Rose also wrote the screenplay for the 1957 movie, which was co-produced by Fonda and directed by Sidney Lumet, taking charge of his first feature film before he went on to direct such masterpieces as Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Network and The Verdict. Again, Lumet’s film was widely interpreted as a symbolic attack on the McCarthyite witch-hunting mood of mid-Fifties America.
Though the film, which cost only $300,000 to make, was not a success at the box office, it received critical acclaim and was nominated for three Oscars. Ever since, it has regularly featured in lists of the greatest Hollywood movies of all time. And there can be no dispute that it is a magnificent piece of cinema, full of wonderful acting, rich dialogue and fine camerawork. Though there is a sense of inevitability about the ending, Lumet still manages to create an atmosphere of mounting drama. The fact that almost all the action takes place in one claustrophobic jury room on a steamy night in New York only adds to the gripping tension.
For all its artistic quality, however, Twelve Angry Men is a morally flawed film. Essentially, it is a story of liberal conceit. The self-righteous Fonda character twists every piece of evidence, and stretches the term ‘reasonable doubt’ beyond any logical breaking-point.
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Scott B.
February 19th, 2008 1:04pm"It is one of the bizarre paradoxes of modern liberalism that those who trumpet their concern for the vulnerable should actually be such noisy supporters of criminals, the nastiest and most aggressive people in our society." Not that paradoxical when you consider that for the bleeding-heart liberal, a ‘victim’ is a social outsider, someone who is discriminated against by mainstream society', and who only liberals are compassionate enough to care for and minister to. When it comes to ordinary decent members of that society being genuinely victimised by a member of the supposed victim-group, then where’s the moral preening to be had in that?