Search - 12 Angry Men on DVD

MPAA Rating: NR Content Advisory: Adult Situations, Questionable for Children, Suitable for Teens Movie Release: 1957 DVD Release: 03/06/2001 Format: DVD - Black and White,Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV Audio Tracks: English, French Subtitles: French, Spanish SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 1 hrs 36 mins Studio: MGM Members Wishing: 33 Genres: Drama, Courtroom Drama See Also: 12 Angry Men [Decades Collection], 12 Angry Men [50th Anniversary Edition]

A Puerto Rican youth is on trial for murder, accused of knifing his father to death. The twelve jurors retire to the jury room, having been admonished that the defendant is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Eleven of the jurors vote for conviction, each for reasons of his own. The sole holdout is Juror #8, played by Henry Fonda. As Fonda persuades the weary jurors to re-examine the evidence, we learn the backstory of each man. Juror #3 (Lee J. Cobb), a bullying self-made man, has estranged himself from his own son. Juror #7 (Jack Warden) has an ingrained mistrust of foreigners; so, to a lesser extent, does Juror #6 (Edward Binns). Jurors #10 (Ed Begley) and #11 (George Voskovec), so certain of the infallibility of the Law, assume that if the boy was arrested, he must be guilty. Juror #4 (E.G. Marshall) is an advocate of dispassionate deductive reasoning. Juror #5 (Jack Klugman), like the defendant a product of "the streets," hopes that his guilty vote will distance himself from his past. Juror #12 (Robert Webber), an advertising man, doesn't understand anything that he can't package and market. And Jurors #1 (Martin Balsam), #2 (John Fiedler) and #9 (Joseph Sweeney), anxious not to make waves, "go with the flow." The excruciatingly hot day drags into an even hotter night; still, Fonda chips away at the guilty verdict, insisting that his fellow jurors bear in mind those words "reasonable doubt." A pet project of Henry Fonda's, Twelve Angry Men was his only foray into film production; the actor's partner in this venture was Reginald Rose, who wrote the 1954 television play on which the film was based. Carried over from the TV version was director Sidney Lumet, here making his feature-film debut. A flop when it first came out (surprisingly, since it cost almost nothing to make), Twelve Angry Men holds up beautifully when seen today. It was remade for television in 1997 by director William Friedkin with Jack Lemmon and George C. Scott. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Henry Fonda - Juror #8
Lee J. Cobb - Juror #3
Ed Begley, Sr. - Juror #10
E.G. Marshall - Juror #4
Jack Warden - Juror #7
Jack Klugman - Juror #5
Martin Balsam - Juror #1
Edward Binns - Juror #6
Joseph Sweeney - Juror #9
George Voskovec - Juror #11
Robert Webber - Juror #12
John Fiedler - Juror #2

12 Angry Men is one of the more enduring titles in United Artists' 1950s catalog, although, ironically enough, it was never profitable. Produced by Henry Fonda and author Reginald Rose, it was a very self-consciously important movie (and justifiably) about racism, human frailties, and basically decent men trying to act that way despite themselves, and it came out in 1957, when the public was just beginning to turn toward serious movies of that kind. Elia Kazan and José Ferrer made headway that year with A Face in the Crowd and The Great Man, respectively, but those were more overtly entertaining (albeit serious) films; 12 Angry Men was less appealing on its face, being an adaptation of the television play that took place almost entirely in a one-room set. Even with Henry Fonda and Lee J. Cobb leading a brilliant cast of actors -- most of whom were to become well known and a few of them stars in their own right -- it was mishandled by United Artists, which opened the film in a huge first-run theater in New York. Not only was the movie totally unsuited to the kind of downtown movie palace that UA booked it into but, as a non-widescreen production, it was literally lost in that setting, even for the audiences that did attend.
The movie itself has lost none of its power, despite the passage of almost 50 years since the original play was written and the changes that have taken place in the rest of the world. All-male, all-white juries are long gone in New York, where the movie is set; modern advertising executives and stock brokers would make Robert Webber's and E.G. Marshall's characters look like pathetic old men; and the racist and anti-immigrant sentiments of the characters played by Ed Begley and Jack Warden would likely never make it past the jury selection process today. Most of the rest of the set-up is still valid, however, and the dialogue all rings true. Sidney Lumet, in his big-screen debut, keeps his camera moving gracefully and seemingly effortlessly, and it may be a sign of his career on television that the movie may work better on the small screen than in a theater -- some of the quick cuts and tight close-ups seem more suited to the television screen.
The DVD, letterboxed to its modest, original 1.66:1 aspect ratio, looks superior in sharpness and contrast to either of the prior laserdisc editions. The only bonus is an original trailer that tries hard to make this movie look like a violent crime thriller. The chaptering is adequate, marking the major sequences, although one wishes that there were an insert listing them, maybe with a paragraph about the movie's history. This entire series of "Vintage Classics" from MGM/UA (which is made up mostly of United Artists titles, the MGM portion of the company's pre-1986 history having been sold off long since to Turner Entertainment) is welcome for its low price, but it is being done on the cheap, with no real annotation or any insert card. Ideally, they would have gotten Lumet -- who was happy to contribute to Columbia-TriStar's release of Fail Safe -- to do an audio commentary, but that's asking too much of this series, evidently. Still, the price is right and the viewing is scintillating. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide