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.
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Guilty.
Not guilty.
Guilty.
Boy, how do you like that?
Oh, that other chap flips his wings.
All right.
Who was it?
Come on, I want to know.
Excuse me.
This was a secret ballot.
We all agreed on that, no?
If the gentleman wanted to remain secret...
Secret?
What do you mean, secret?
There are no secrets in a jury room.
I know who it was.
Brother, you really are something.
You sit here, vote guilty like the rest of us,
and some golden-voiced preacher starts tearing your poor heart out
about some underprivileged kid just couldn't help becoming a murderer,
and you change your vote.
If that isn't the most sickening...
Why don't you drop a quarter in this collection box?
Oh, now, just wait a minute.
Listen, you can't talk to me like that.
Now, who do you think you are?
Calm down, calm down.
Now, what does he think he is?
Did you hear that?
It doesn't matter.
He's very excitable.
Sit down.
Excitable?
You bet I'm excitable.
We're trying to put a guilty man in the chair where he belongs.
Someone starts telling us fairy tales, and we're listening.
Hey, uh, come on, huh?
What made you change your vote?
He didn't change his vote.
I did.
Oh, fine.
Now, Lewis, would you like me to tell you why?
No, I wouldn't like you to tell me why.
Well, I'd like to make it clear anyway, if you don't mind.
Do we have to listen to this?
The man wants to talk.
Thank you.
This gentleman has been standing alone against us.
Now, he doesn't say the boy is not guilty.
He just isn't sure.
Well, it's not easy to stand alone against the ridicule of others.
So he gambled for support.
And I gave it to him.
I respect his motives.
But the boy in trial is probably guilty.
But, uh, I want to hear more.
Right now, the vote is 10 to 2.
I'm talking here.
You have no right to leave this room.
Yeah, I hear you.
Never will.
Let's sit down.