Review: ‘Juror #2,’ starring Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette, J.K. Simmons and Kiefer Sutherland

November 4, 2024

by Carla Hay

“Juror #2”

Directed by Clint Eastwood

Culture Representation: Taking place in 2021, in Chatham County, Georgia, the dramatic film “Juror #2” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans, Asians and Latin people) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A magazine writer is selected to be on a jury for a murder trial when he finds out that the person who died might not be a murder victim but a victim of a hit-and-run accident that he caused a year earlier.

Culture Audience: “Juror #2” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, director Clint Eastwood, and gripping courtroom/legal dramas that have very good acting.

People who love dramas about crime investigations and jury trials will find a lot to like about “Juror #2.” It’s an absorbing and suspenseful story about a juror with a very big secret that influences his actions as a jury member. The secret is revealed early enough in the movie for viewers to know if the person on trial is guilty or not guilty. The real mystery is what the guilty party will do to reveal or cover up the truth.

Directed by Clint Eastwood and written by Jonathan Abrams, “Juror #2” is the feature-film debut for screenwriter Abrams. It’s a very taut thriller that has a few minor plot holes or unanswered questions that don’t take away from the overall impact of the movie. Some viewers expecting a certain outcome might not like how the movie ends. “Juror #2” had its world premiere at the 2024 edition of AFI Fest.

“Juror #2” takes place in Chatham County, Georgia, where the movie was filmed on location. The story’s protagonist is Justin Kemp (played by Nicholas Hoult), a mild-mannered man who works as a writer for an unnamed regional lifestyle magazine. The movie takes place over the course of a few weeks in October 2021, although there are some flashbacks to things that happened in October 2020.

In October 2021, Justin and his schoolteacher wife Allison Crewson (played by Zoey Deutch) are anticipating the birth of a child, whose gender has not yet been revealed. Allison is in her third trimester of the pregnancy and is due to give birth on October 25, 2021. It’s later revealed that Allison had a miscarriage of twins in October 2020, which is why she and Justin are particularly anxious about her current pregnancy. So far, Allison hasn’t been experiencing any major health issues for this pregnancy.

Justin seems like an upstanding family man. However, he has a very troubled past that Allison knew about before they got married. Justin is a recovering alcoholic who’s been arrested and convicted in the past for more than one DUI. He got lucky and apparently didn’t get a felony conviction for his DUI cases, which would explain why Justin is eligible for jury duty. Justin has been clean and sober for a few years, which is about the same amount of time that he and Allison have been married.

Justin gets a jury duty notice, but he thinks he’ll be able to get out of jury duty if he explains that his wife is due to give birth any day that he would be required to be on jury duty in the next several days. Before he goes to the courthouse, Justin and Allison joke that Justin could just say something obscene or weird to get out of jury duty.

During this time, the local news has been saturated with reports about the upcoming trial of James Michael Sythe (played by Gabriel Basso), who is accused of the first-degree murder of his 26-year-old girlfriend Kendall Alice Carter (played by Francesca Eastwood), who died on October 21, 2020. Kendall’s mutliated body was found on a steep incline in a wooded area near a barrier rail on Old Quarry Road, which does not have lighting at night. Her death was ruled a homicide from blunt force trauma.

The defendant in this trial has a history of criminal activities, including domestic violence against Kendall, as well being a known drug dealer. He became the prime suspect because on the rainy night of Kendall’s death, he and Kendall were seen having a physical fight inside and outside a local bar called Rowdy’s Hideaway. People at the bar last saw Kendall and James that night when the couple’s arguing continued in the bar’s parking lot.

Kendall walked away from the bar, and James followed her by foot. Witnesses later testify that Kendall and James had a volatile relationship where they would get in physical fights, break up, and then get back together again. Kendall’s last night alive at Rowdy’s Hideaway is shown in several flashback scenes.

This murder case is being prosecuted by ambitious and steely Faith Killebrew (played by Toni Collette), who is in the midst of a campaign to be elected district attorney. James is represented by public defender Eric Resnick (played by Chris Messina), who is as tough as Faith. Eric fully believes that James is not guilty of killing Kendall and thinks there wasn’t a proper investigation into other possible persons of interest or reasons for Kendall’s death.

And there’s room for reasonable doubt. For starters, there were no witnesses, and no murder weapon was found. However, James doesn’t have a verifiable alibi of where he was at the time of Kendall’s death. He says he drove home alone and wasn’t on Old Quarry Road. There’s no security camera footage to prove or disprove he’s telling the truth. And it appears he had a clear motive to kill Kendall. James has rejected a plea bargain deal and wants to go to trial.

During jury selections, Justin finds out that his jury duty is for this trial. And that makes him want to get out of jury duty even more, because murder trials can be unpredictable regarding how long they could last. Judge Thelma Hollub (played by Amy Aquino), who is presiding over the trial, doesn’t accept Justin’s “baby on the way” excuse for getting out of jury duty. Justin is selected as Juror #2.

It seems to be an open-and-shut case. The case’s medical examiner (played by Kurt Yue) testifies that the blunt force trauma that caused Kendall’s death could only be caused by a weapon that was not used accidentally. Several witnesses testify to James’ violent tendencies and his past domestic abuse of Kendall. James seems to be the only person with a motive to murder Kendall.

But as the testimony goes on and the facts are presented, Justin comes to a horrifying awareness that he was in Rowdy’s Hideaway on the same night of Kendall’s death. And he was driving on Old Quarry Road around the same time that Kendall died and when his car accidentally hit something heavy that he thought was a deer. Whatever he hit went over the barrier rail, but since it was dark and raining, Justin couldn’t see anything when he looked over the rail. After looking at the crime scene photos of Kendall’s body, and hearing where she was injured, Justin now believes that she died from the hit-and-run accident that he caused.

What was a recovering alcoholic doing at a bar by himself? It turns out that Justin was tempted to relapse during the period of time that the movie implies was when his and Allison’s twins recently died from the miscarriage. At Rowdy’s Hideaway that night, Justin had ordered an alcoholic drink, but he didn’t drink it, and he left the bar shortly afterward. While driving on Old Quarry Road that rainy night, he was sobbing and distracted by a phone call from Allison when his car accidentally hit what he thought was a deer.

Now, one year later, Justin is fairly certain that he was the one who killed Kendall. Justin asks for advice from his attorney friend Larry Lasker (played by Kiefer Sutherland), who is a leader of the Alcoholics Anonymous meetings that Justin attends. Larry advises Justin not to tell anyone else about this secret, because Justin isn’t completely sure and no one can prove that Justin was the one who caused Kendall’s death. Larry also says that because of Justin’s history of DUI arrests and alcoholism, and because Justin was at Rowdy’s Hideaway that night, Justin could be facing serious prison time if he confessed to the hit and run.

Justin can’t get out of jury duty, so he thinks the best thing to do is make sure that James is found not guilty by the jury. James doesn’t want it to be a hung jury because there would likely be a re-trial where James would be found guilty. It’s an uphill battle for Justin to convince his fellow jurors to vote not guilty. When the jurors begin deliberations, almost all of them say that they want to vote for a guilty verdict. Justin is the first to cast doubt, but he comes up against a lot of resistance from several jurors who say they refuse to change their minds about voting guilty.

The other jurors have various backgrounds and different reasons for their conclusions about the case. Jury foreperson Denice Aldworth (played by Leslie Bibb), who has previous experience as a jury foreperson, tries to be as fair as possible and attempts to keep the peace when the jurors inevitably argue with each other. Outspoken bus driver Yolanda (played by Adrienne C. Moore) is one of the jurors who says she won’t change her guilty vote. Yolanda keeps saying she just wants to complete this jury duty as soon as possible so she can go home to her three kids. Another person who’s adamant about voting guilty is youth center worker Marcus (played by Cedric Yarbrough), who has an agenda for wanting to find James guilty.

The other jurors are senior citizen Nellie (played by Rebecca Koon), divorced dad Luke (played by Jason Coviello), medical student Keiko (played by Chikako Fukuyama), stoner Brody (played by Drew Scheid), social media influencer Courtney (played by Hedy Nasser), “regular guy” Vince (played by Phil Biedron), college-age Eli (played by Onix Serrano) and retired homicide detective Harold (played by J.K. Simmons), who is the only other person on the jury besides Justin who initially says there’s room for reasonable doubt. There’s also an alternate juror named Irene (played by Zele Avradopoulos), a true-crime enthusiast, who brings a little bit of comic relief to this tension-filled story.

“Juror #2” stumbles a bit in the second half of the movie when Justin does some things that would be obvious red flags of suspicion in the real world. For starters, he hasn’t fully repaired the damage to the car, which he is in the process of selling. There are also some scenes of Faith doing door-to-door detective work that someone on her level of prosecutor would not be doing in real life. In real life, an underling investigator would be doing that type of work. Viewers will have to suspend some disbelief in those scenes, since “Juror #2” is a fictional movie.

What makes “Juror #2 riveting to watch are the engrossing direction and convincing performances. Hoult does a very good job of depicting the inner turmoil of Justin as an expectant father who is trying to hold his life together as he knows that things could easily fall apart if his secret is exposed. At the same time, Justin feels tremendously guilty about the possibility of wrongfully convicting someone who didn’t commit the crime.

Collette and Hoult, who previously worked together in the 2002 drama “About a Boy,” give the standout performances in “Juror #2.” Simmons and Messina also deliver noteworthy performances, even though they’ve played these types of characters many times already—the grizzled cynic for Simmons, the sarcastic dealmaker for Messina. Sutherland shares top billing for “Juror #2,” but he’s only in the movie for less than 15 minutes. “Juror #2” will not only keep people guessing on the outcome but this memorable movie also effectively shows how lines can be blurred between “heroes” and “villains.”

Warner Bros. Pictures released “Juror #2” in select U.S. cinemas on November 1, 2024. Max will premiere the movie on December 20, 2024.