[COLUMN] Juror #2 Feels Like the Culmination of Clint Eastwood's Career | by Darren Mooney (Patreon)

Note: This piece contains spoilers for Clint Eastwood’s Juror #2, which is playing in 50 theatres in the United States. There’s a separate piece to be written about Warners’ handling of the film. This guy really was railroaded. It’s worth seeing, if you’re fond of Eastwood, Americana or courtroom dramas. If you are going to see it, feel free to bookmark this piece and come back.

Film critic David Sims likes to joke that there are two quintessential Clint Eastwood narratives, “this guy was railroaded” or “I’m guilty, send me to jail.” This is obviously, given the length and breadth of Eastwood’s career, a slight exaggeration. There are plenty of Eastwood movies that don’t neatly fit into that dichotomy: Invictus, J. Edgar, Jersey Boys. However, there’s more than a grain of truth to the observation.

There are any number of “this guy was railroaded” movies in Eastwood’s filmography. Perhaps the most overtly conservative movies in the director’s body of work, these films are often studies of the conflict between the dysfunction of American institutions and the poor people trapped in these monstrous machinations: True Crime, Changeling, Sully, Richard Jewell. These films are often angry and righteous studies of injustice, arguments for defending the individual from the state.

In contrast, the “I’m guilty, send me to jail” movies tend to be built around Eastwood as a performer and are often studies in paternal guilt - more “I’m a bad dad, send me to jail.” While there is often (but not always) a literal crime in the film, the moral transgression is often (but not always) the character’s failure as a father. There are literal examples of this subgenre about law and criminality: Absolute Power, The Mule, Mystic River, A Perfect World. However, the guilt is occasionally more spiritual as Million Dollar Baby or Gran Torino.

Eastwood’s latest film, Juror #2, is an intersection of these two trends. James Michael Sythe (Gabriel Basso) is arrested for the murder of his girlfriend, Kendall Carter (Francesca Eastwood). Carter’s body was found in a ditch with severe head trauma after the couple had a very public argument at a local bar. Sythe is already well known to the authorities, and it seems like an open-and-shut case that will secure prosecutor Faith Killebrew’s (Toni Collette) election as district attorney.

When the jury begins its deliberations, it seems like the matter is already settled. In their preliminary vote, moments after closing arguments, eleven members of the panel believe that Sythe is guilty. However, there is just one holdout. Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult) is skeptical of the mountain of evidence against Sythe and tries to push the jury towards a “not guilty” verdict. Kemp pushes the jurors to treat their role with the responsibility that it deserves.

Given Eastwood’s advanced age, a lot of the press around Juror #2 has focused on the question of whether it will be the director’s last film. According to the Hollywood Reporter article announcing the film last year, Eastwood “wanted to find one last project in order to be able to ride off into the sunset with his head held high.” Juror #2 certainly feels elegiac. Then again, so did Cry Macho, and before that so did The Mule, and before that so did Gran Torino, and before that so did Unforgiven.

Indeed, Eastwood is reportedly already considering his next project. At this point, Eastwood has been producing movies that would make for a fitting final film for over three decades, mournful and reflective takes on his own screen persona and the larger American mythos in which that exists. It seems likely that Eastwood will continue directing until he dies. It also seems likely that whatever Eastwood’s final film ends up being will end up feeling like a fitting summation of his life and career.

On paper, premise of Juror #2 is eerily similar to 12 Angry Men, another story about one juror (Henry Fonda) trying to push his jury towards a “not guilty” verdict in a similarly black-and-white case. 12 Angry Men is a foundational American text. It has been described as “a love letter to the American judicial system.” It inspired Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor to pursue a career in law. Stanley Fish asks, “It is as American as the Declaration of Independence, isn’t it?”

In some ways, it makes sense that Eastwood would be drawn to a riff on 12 Angry Men. Eastwood is, to quote Johann Hari, “the quintessential icon of the old America.” Perhaps even more than John Wayne, Eastwood is the living embodiment of the American cowboy and frontier mythology. One of the central tensions of the western genre is whether justice is best derived from private individuals or from the state, what is known as “frontier justice.”

12 Angry Men is engaged with that mythology. For all that the film is an inspiring and affirming story about the justice system, it’s also about how that system is “so feeble it must depend, in the end, on the instincts of a single courageous dissenting juror.” As Kyle A. Cuordileone points out, the lone dissenter in 12 Angry Men serves “to uphold the rights of the individual against the unthinking group.” He might not carry a gun, but he embodies that western archetype of the rugged individual.

However, Eastwood puts a bitter spin on the 12 Angry Men formula. Kemp doesn’t just believe that Sythe is innocent. Kemp knows that Sythe didn’t kill Carter. Kemp knows this because he was at that bar on that night, on the verge of relapsing into alcoholism. Driving home, Kemp hit what he assumed to be a deer. However, once the facts of the case are outlined to him, Kemp realizes that he actually hit Carter. Kemp knows that Sythe is innocent, because Kemp is guilty.

Kemp is an archetypal Clint Eastwood protagonist. He is a failed father, like Luther Whitney (Eastwood) in Absolute Power, Jimmy Markum (Sean Penn) in Mystic River, Frankie Dunn (Eastwood, again) in Million Dollar Baby, Walt Kowalski (still Eastwood) in Gran Torino and Earl Stone (yep, Eastwood) in The Mule. It is revealed that Kemp was at the bar that night, staring at his drink, because his wife Allison Crewson (Zoey Deutch) had just suffered a miscarriage, losing twins.

Kemp’s time on the jury coincides with another “high-risk pregnancy” for Crewson. Kemp is summoned as her delivery date looms. Crewson is drawn into her husband’s conspiracy when Killebrew visits the family home to follow up on potential leads relating to Carter’s death. Crewson repeats his lies about the accident, unwittingly providing an alibi for her husband. However, that visit forces a confrontation between the couple, in which Kemp confesses everything to his wife.

The film’s coda even finds Kemp and Crewson playing with their newborn, Kemp’s sins casting a dark shadow that hangs over the otherwise idyllic American home. (In one wry detail, Kemp and Crewson greet Halloween trick-or-treaters by dressing up as the couple from Grant Wood’s American Gothic, another slice of archetypal Americana.) Juror #2 creates an implicit link between Kemp’s transgression and the family that he seeks to protect, as if his sin taints the entire household.

The fathers in Clint Eastwood movies are often defined by their failure to protect or maintain relationships with their daughters: Kate Whitney (Laura Linney) in Absolute Power, Katie Markum (Emmy Rossum) in Mystic River, the unseen Katy and the surrogate Maggie (Hilary Swank) in Million Dollar Baby. That’s a lot of Kates, even discounting Kate Everett (Francesca Eastwood) from True Crime. Eastwood is father to eight children by six women, many of whom were only recognized and acknowledged later in life. On the subject of Kates: one of these was Kathryn Reeves, whose birth certificate read “father declined.”

In particular, Eastwood has spent the past couple of decades trying to strengthen relationships with his daughters. Laurie Eastwood only managed to track down her father during the late 1990s, when she was in her 30s. Following their reconnection, Eastwood worked hard to fold her into the family, taking her to the Oscars ceremony for Mystic River. He also tried to be a more active father to his youngest daughter, Morgan, born in 1997. “I think you appreciate it a lot more when you get to my age,” he confessed.

This is not the subtext of these movies; it is the text. His daughters often make small but significant cameos. In Million Dollar Baby, Maggie shares a short, meaningful glance at a young girl played by Morgan Eastwood. Alison Eastwood initially turned down a cameo as Earl’s daughter in The Mule, but changed her mind. “The more I thought about [it], I was like, ‘Well, maybe this is an opportunity to not only play his daughter, but also just to spend some free time with him’,” she admitted. “And my husband said, ‘If you don’t do this, you’re going to regret it for the rest of your life.’”

There is a similarly pointed casting choice in Juror #2. The movie’s victim, Carter, is played by Eastwood’s daughter, Francesca. It’s a metatextual decision that reinforces the connection between Kemp’s moral transgression outside the home and the family he hopes to insulate from his failures. In Eastwood movies, despite the best efforts of these fathers to compartmentalize their mistakes, there is no way to completely separate the professional from the domestic. Kemp cannot be both a bad man and a good father.

More broadly, Juror #2 is a complex and thoughtful meditation on guilt. Kemp is not a mustache-twirling sociopath; he doesn’t want Sythe to be convicted. Initially, he believes he can sway the jury to acquit Sythe without confessing his own sins. However, he is understandably unwilling to give up his own freedom to protect a relative stranger. When the chips are down, he caves. After struggling with his conscience, he sides with the rest of the jury. He convicts Sythe to protect himself.

One of the smarter choices in Juror #2 is the film’s understanding that very few people are truly evil, but most are just apathetic or overworked. As retired detective Harold (J. K. Simmons) explains, the cops identified Sythe as their most likely suspect by following the path of least resistance. The medical examiner (Kurt Yue) who ruled on Carter’s death also examined five other bodies that day. Public defender Eric Resnick (Chris Messina) is fighting a prosecutor’s office with a larger staff and greater resources.

Killebrew never looks twice at Sythe because an easy conviction would be the quickest path to electoral victory. Judge Thelma Hollub (Amy Aquino) acknowledges the jury’s disinterest in court procedures. Most of the jurors just want to get home, back to their lives and loved ones. Before he realizes his own connection to the case, even Kemp tries to wriggle his way out of jury duty because doesn’t want to leave Crewson during her pregnancy. It’s all very understandable. It’s not a conspiracy, it’s just indifference.

This feels somewhat pointed. During the Trump presidency, journalists and pundits would often point to 12 Angry Men as an era-defining text, insisting that it had “a new relevance”, that it “describes the views of huge swaths of the electorate” and that it functions as “an allegory for contemporary Trumpist America.” It’s a romantic view of contemporary American politics, the belief that a broken system can be fixed by the right person in the right place with the right argument.

Juror #2 feels like a rejoinder to these arguments. With its emphasis on moral sloth and passivity, Eastwood’s film deconstructs and interrogates the foundational myths of American democratic institutions. Over the past decade, the democratic structures of the United States have been slowly and gradually eroded. Under sustained assault by those who would seek to violate the country’s norms and laws, these institutional bulwarks have decayed and collapsed.

Part of the problem is that these systemic protections are simply not strong enough, but Juror #2 also argues that faith in American exceptionalism is somewhat misplaced. It’s unreasonable to rely on rugged individualist heroes. In reality, most people just want to get through the day. This collapse of American institutions is driven by the corruption and ideology of those in power, but it is enabled by the cowardice and the fatigue of the general public.

However, despite his efforts to keep his transgressions and his family separate, the final moments of Juror #2 quite literally brings the reality of the situation home to Kemp. Playing with his child, Kemp is interrupted by a knock at the door. Killebrew is waiting for him. Juror #2 understands that the dividing line between a private individual and a public institution is nothing more than an open door. The two dominant genres of Eastwood films do not seem as distinct as they once were.

At 94, Clint Eastwood has once again constructed a compelling exploration of the foundational myths of American culture, examining and subverting the comforting tales that defined so much of his early career. His insight undiminished by age, Eastwood remains a poet laureate of the American experience.