Imagine 12 Angry Men, but what if one of the jurors did it. The premise of the story is actually very interesting: a juror realizes, during the opening statements of a murder trial, that they were actually the person responsible for the victim’s death. The actual, moment-to-moment drama of the film was well-written, which makes it easy to miss its countless problems, not the least of which is that JK Simmons was severely underutilized. Several plot threads go nowhere. The entire legal process is depicted terribly, but these are not intended to be in-story shortcomings: both the prosecution and the defense offer extremely weak arguments in court, neither side followed through on even the most basic of preliminary research, the jury selection process is implausibly invasive, the titular juror’s own lawyer acts criminally, and the judge is laughably incompetent. How coincidental the two Black characters were both one-dimensionally angry and openly biased. How convenient the jury went from a split vote to unanimous verdict off-screen solely because the plot needed it to happen. Oh: this was directed by Clint Eastwood. That explains almost all of these problems.