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Twelve Angry Men
Questions from the Film
The character with the most effective critical thinking skills was Juror #8. Clearly #8 is the most thoughtful and analytical of all the jurors. He may have been the most progressive politically as well. He is hero in the movie and he may have been an open-minded person prior to the trial; that is, he may have come from a home that was not racist (the 1950s were the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement and bigots in the South were attacking demonstrations so race was in the news). Number 8 is a critical thinker because instead of going along with the crowd on the first vote, he deviates from what everyone else has already decided. He has thought these issues over critically (examining witness testimony very carefully) and has decided that there was no hurry to rush to judgment. Number 8 also has a strong enough personality -- and he certainly is blessed with intelligence -- which are the key to being able to...
Number 8 notes that the old man (who provided testimony as a witness testified that he saw the defendant running from the building had gone through a stroke; #8 critical questions that testimony and wonders out loud just how could that stroke victim have walked that fast? #8 also mentions that an elevated train was passing through during the time of the murder and there were other questionable circumstances.
TWO: Juror #10 is not only a bigot and a big mouth kind of guy, but also he is not a character who would do any critical thinking about this case. Critical thinking? #10 doesn't do any thinking at all because his mind is made up from the start. At one point #10 goes into a wild raging rant, expressing his racist views (although the audience doesn't really know the ethnicity of the defendant) and insisting that "these people" cannot be trusted. "These people" that he refers to are people who live in slums; #10 calls them animals and insists that they love killing one another for fun. At one point he shouts "Listen to me. Listen…" and juror #4 says in response, "I have. Now sit down and don't open your mouth again."
THREE: There are definite barriers that keep the jurors from thinking critically about this trial and the…
Angry Men The jury in Twelve Angry Men is not diverse in terms of ethnicity and gender, because it consists of twelve white males. The only diversity evident is with Juror 5, who has a social class-consciousness that is different from the other men due to his having grown up poor. This little "in" to the theme of prejudice is what helps Juror 8 eventually persuade the others that their
Lumet's filmed adaptation of Reginald Rose's Twelve Angry Men focuses primarily on prejudice and the ways in which prejudice can obscure or distort one's sense of justice. The twelve jurors in the film all have their own personalities, their own backgrounds, their own histories, their own preoccupations: one wants to catch the ballgame and is willing to vote whichever way will get him out of the room sooner; another sees
Twelve Angry Men Criminal Justice Courts and procedures in the film version of Twelve Angry Men (1957). The title of the film Twelve Angry Men (1957) is somewhat misleading: there are actually eleven angry men depicted in the film and one rational man who is capable of seeing the facts. The classic courtroom drama depicts twelve male jurors who have recently heard a trial where a young Puerto Rican boy stands accused of
The jury members listened and accepted what he said. When one person shows the other jury members that the knife is not so unique after all, they begin to realize there might be other things to reasonably doubt in the prosecution's case as well. This worked well in the story because the jury foreman didn't demand loyalty from the other jury members. He didn't any power over them. They wouldn't
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