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

November 4, 2024

by Carla Hay

A scene from “Juror #2.” Pictured in front row, from left to right: Chikako Fukuyama, Nicholas Hoult, Adrienne C. Moore, J.K. Simmons, Drew Scheid and Hedy Nasser. Pictured in back row: Leslie Bibb and Cedric Yarbrough. (Photo by Claire Folger/Warner Bros. Pictures)

“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.

Review: ‘The Outfit’ (2022), starring Mark Rylance, Zoey Deutch, Dylan O’Brien, Johnny Flynn, Nikki Amuka-Bird and Simon Russell Beale

March 18, 2022

by Carla Hay

Zoey Deutch and Mark Rylance in “The Outfit” (Photo courtesy of Focus Features)

“The Outfit” (2022)

Directed by Graham Moore

Culture Representation: Taking place in Chicago in 1956, the dramatic film “The Outfit” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans) representing the working-class, middle-class and criminal underground.

Culture Clash: A mild-mannered British man, who owns a men’s clothing shop in Chicago, has local gangsters as his clients, and he becomes embroiled in the gang’s problems. 

Culture Audience: “The Outfit” will appeal primarily to people who like watching above-average mystery thrillers that have some unpredictable plot twists.

Johnny Flynn and Mark Rylance in “The Outfit” (Photo by Rob Youngson/Focus Features)

The suspenseful thriller “The Outfit” keeps viewers guessing about who are the heroes and who are the villains. It’s a well-crafted movie with a very talented cast that brings impressive energy to this unique story. If people ever say that good old-fashioned mystery films aren’t being made anymore, then point them in the direction of “The Outfit.” It pays homage to Alfred Hitchcock-influenced films of the mid-20th century while avoiding being a misguided, “stuck in a time warp” mess.

“The Outfit,” which takes place in 1956, is the feature-film directorial debut of Graham Moore. He won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, for 2014’s “The Imitation Game,” another well-made movie about an intelligent British man who gets caught up in a web of lies and treacherous conspiracies. Moore co-wrote the “The Outfit” screenplay with Jonathan McClain.

Unlike the sprawling settings of “The Imitation Game,” the setting of “The Outfit” is contained entirely in one place: the small clothing shop of Leonard Burling (played by Mark Rylance), a British immigrant who has been living in Chicago for the past several years. It would be easy for viewers to assume that “The Outfit” was adapted from a stage play, but this movie has an original screenplay.

Leonard’s specialty is high-priced, custom-made men’s suits. He also does clothing repairs. He’s very meticulous and takes pride in his work. He’s also quick to tell people that he’s a cutter, not a tailor. As time goes on in the movie, viewers see that the movie’s title of “The Outfit” has a double meaning: the type of clothing that Leonard can make and the gang syndicate that causes the dangerous predicament that Leonard becomes involved with in this movie.

Leonard is a reclusive, middle-aged bachelor with no children. He lives alone in a back area of the shop. Leonard has one employee: a woman in her 20s named Mable (played by Zoey Deutch), who is the shop’s administrative assistant/receptionist. She has a perky personality and is very reliable. However, Mable is honest in telling Leonard that she doesn’t love his line of work and only has this job to make enough money to pay her bills. Her dream is to travel around the world, including go to Paris, a city that has a special place in her heart.

Leonard tells people that he moved from the United Kingdom to Chicago because the popularity of denim clothing made his bespoke line of work fairly obsolete in his native country, where he used to have a shop on London’s Savile Row. Leonard’s reason for immigrating to America doesn’t sound very plausible, because denim clothing is popular in the United States too. Leonard is very private and doesn’t divulge much about his personal life, although he mentions that he served in the British military during World War I.

Among the people who are Leonard’s loyal clients are some local Irish gangsters. Leonard stays out of the gang’s dirty dealings and doesn’t pass judgment. The wealthy Irish mob boss in the area is named Roy Boyle (played by Simon Russell Beale), who doesn’t appear until about halfway through the movie. Roy is grooming his only son Richie Boyle (played by Dylan O’Brien), who’s in his 20s or early 30s, to eventually take over the gang’s business.

However, Richie has a rival for this position of power: a cunning manipulator named Francis (played by Johnny Flynn), who’s about five to eight years older than Richie. Francis was orphaned at an early age and taken in by Roy as somewhat of a foster son. Francis is as cold and calculating as Richie is hot-headed and impulsive. Richie feels a lot of jealousy and resentment toward Francis, whom Richie suspects is his father Roy’s top choice to be Roy’s successor as the mob leader. Richie gripes to Leonard about Francis: “He not even Irish!”

Something happens during this story that forces Leonard to be caught in increasingly elaborate deceptions and traps involving a coveted surveillance tape and a missing person. Complicating matters, Francis and Mable are romantically involved with each other. All of the cast members give exemplary performances, but Rylance is the obvious standout because his Leonard character is the most complex. Nikki Amuka-Bird shares top billing in “The Outfit” as an enigmatic woman named Violet, but viewers should know that Violet gets very limited screen time (about five minutes) toward the end of the film. After a somewhat slow-paced start, “The Outfit” goes on a thrilling ride that keeps viewers on edge throughout this entire memorable mystery.

Focus Features released “The Outfit” in select U.S. cinemas on March 18, 2022. UPDATE: Peacock will premiere “The Outfit” on May 2, 2022.

2019 Tribeca Film Festival movie review: ‘Buffaloed’

May 1, 2019

by Carla Hay

Zoey Deutch in "Buffaloed"
Zoey Deutch in “Buffaloed” (Photo by Guy Godfree)

“Buffaloed”

Directed by Tanya Wexler

World premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City on April 27, 2019.

What’s an ambitious girl to do when she needs money to go to an Ivy League university but she can’t afford it? Turn to a life of crime, of course. That’s pretty much the story of Peg Dahl (manically played by Zoey Deutch) in the over-the-top comedy “Buffaloed.” The movie gets its name from Peg’s hometown of Buffalo, New York, where she was raised by a working-class, single mother named Kathy (played by Judy Greer), who doesn’t think Peg needs an Ivy League education to be a success. From an early age, Peg has had an obsession about escaping from Buffalo by attending an Ivy League school and becoming a rich and successful businessperson.

Peg’s dream starts to come true when she’s accepted into an Ivy League school, but she panics after her mother is turned down for financial aid. (Her mother supposedly makes too much money to qualify.) Peg presumably doesn’t have outstanding-enough grades to qualify for an academic scholarship either. And, of course, there would be no “Buffaloed” movie if Peg did what most people do when they can’t afford college tuition—take out a loan. So with no way to afford the tuition and with the deadline approaching to pay the tuition, Peg uses desperate measures and begins selling counterfeit tickets at Buffalo Bills games. Most movies at this point would have had Peg get away with the crime, head off to school, and continue to cook up schemes to pay for her tuition. But this is not that film.

Instead, Peg gets busted early on in the film, and she gets sentenced to 40 months in prison. Goodbye, Ivy League. One of the scenes that shows that “Buffaloed” is taking the campy, not-to-be-taken-seriously route is the chaotic environment of Peg’s trial, where the judge is eating sauce-covered Buffalo wings on the bench. When Peg gets out of prison, she is bitter, disillusioned and in debt. Her legal bills total $50,000, and being a criminal convicted of fraud has greatly reduced her chances of getting a decent job.

So let’s get this straight: Before she went to prison, Peg supposedly wasn’t able to afford an expensive Ivy League education, but she didn’t want to take out a student loan. Now she’s got $50,000 in legal bills because apparently she didn’t want to use a public defender, which is what you’re supposed to do if you can’t afford an expensive attorney. Right. Let’s move on.

Enter a character who opens a window of opportunity for Peg: Sal Scarpetta (played by “Buffaloed” screenwriter Brian Sacca, one of the film’s producers), who works for the town’s top debt-collection agency, which is hounding Peg to pay her debts. Peg and Sal first communicate over the phone when he calls her about her debt. Since the collection agency already knows about her ex-con background, and Peg finds out how much money she could be making if she worked there, it’s not long before she shows up at the agency and asks for a job.

Sal’s boss is Josh “Wizz” Wisnewski (played by Jai Courtney, hamming it up in the villain role), who runs the sleazy agency. Wizz is a sexist bully who’s reluctant to hire Peg in his aggressive, male-dominated environment. But through persistence, Peg convinces Wizz to hire her, and she makes a deal with him to erase all of her debt if she can become the company’s top debt-collector in one month.

Peg soon finds out that Wizz’s operation engages in many illegal practices, including “double-dipping,” a term used to keep billing someone for debt that has already been paid. Peg is so determined to become the top employee that she drives to Ohio to visit an elderly woman with a 20-year-debt (and Peg even brings cupcakes as part of her manipulation), because she figures that the old lady is a prime target for Peg to pull a double-dipping scam on her.

The rest of the movie veers off into a number of twists and turns, including Peg going to war with Wizz for reasons that won’t be spoiled in this review. It’s enough to say that Wizz’s “mob boss” mentality and use of extreme intimidation tactics are examples of the caricature-like silliness in this movie. Somehow, Peg’s mother Kathy, Peg’s brother JJ (played by Noah Reid) and Wizz’s brother Mitch (played by Nicholas Carella) get pulled into these shenanigans. There’s also a subplot where Peg gets romantically involved with the assistant district attorney who prosecuted her: Graham Feany (played by Jermaine Fowler), who knows she’s involved in illegal money-making schemes, but he looks the other way as long as she doesn’t tell him all the details.

“Buffaloed” director Tanya Wexler keeps a madcap pace throughout the movie that works in some areas and doesn’t work in others. Deutch (who is one of the film’s producers) takes on the role of Peg with admirable gusto. However, since Peg can’t seem to get out of Buffalo (something that’s she’s been wanting to do her whole life), and she gets caught early on for a felony crime, Peg is not as smart as the movie wants you to think she is. Unfortunately, the third act is such a mess that only a major rewrite could save the film.

The tone of “Buffaloed” is very uneven: It starts off as a dark comedy, and then turns giddy and almost sentimental in the end. “Buffaloed” could have had much better social commentary on the stresses of paying for college tuition and the extreme lengths people might go to get money for it. Instead, it devolves into an inconsistent whirling mix of under-developed characters and ill-conceived plotlines, just like an electric blender that turns a hodgepodge of ingredients into mush.

 UPDATE: Magnolia Pictures will release “Buffaloed” in select U.S. theaters and VOD on February 14, 2020.

Copyright 2017-2025 Culture Mix
CULTURE MIX