Juror No 2: Movie Review

Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette, Zoey Deutch, Leslie Bibb, JK Simmons
Director: Clint Eastwood

Juror No2 sets out its formulaic store early on in its narrative, with Nicholas Hoult's Justin being told by his wife, played by Zoey Deutch, that he's perfect.

Within 30 minutes of that claim, it's clear he's not.

Sequestered to a jury despite his protestations that his wife's due to give birth in days, Justin finds he's sitting on the case of a man accused of killing his girlfriend after a barroom fallout. 

But seeing the location of the death and the body, Justin realises he was at the bar the night in question and hit something leaving the site - something he thought was a deer, but clearly wasn't....

Juror No2 could have had tension rippled throughout, an obvious courtroom thriller that would have had edges like John Grisham's raft of pulpy thrillers from back in the 90s where Matthew McConaughey drawled his way through. But instead, Eastwood plods through the story, giving it a kind of cosiness that settles more for slow-burn revelations than page-turning histrionics.

It largely pays off though, with a subtle story revealing the layers of the onion rather than a chapter-ending clanger being dropped on screen.

Hoult's impressive in the thriller that's more about how the justice system fails many, imbuing his Justin with the moral quandary that's necessary to bear but struggling with the weight of his own past, his fallacies to live up to his wife's expectations and his survival instinct in the face of doing the right thing.

Collette makes for a great prosecutor as well, a study in underplaying sheer determinance to mark a career for her District Attorney who comes to question her own path toward the justice.

With its ambiguous ending, Juror No2 is designed to spark debate - and perhaps given Eastwood's workmanlike eye behind the camera - from focusing on American flags and Lady Liberty to watching videos of how to be a juror in the American justice system - maybe there's a hint that subtlety was the key here rather than overt acting.

As a result, Juror No2 feels like it lacks a bit of dramatic oomph and opts for one or two misfires (step forward, JK Simmons) - but it's still a solid -if unspectacular - watch from Eastwood in the dying days of his career.

Juror No 2 is streaming now on Neon NZ