Saturday Night at the Movies: Do The Right Thing

Clint Eastwood Grows Up

I miss grown up movies. Yes, the Golden Age of Hollywood remains the standard for cinematic perfection, but honestly, at this point, I’d take the 90s. No, there wasn’t an abundance of timeless classics in those days, but at least you could see some decent, often thoughtful, entertainment. Some of my best teenage memories involve looking up the theater listings in the newspaper (remember those?) with my dad and choosing which movie to see that weekend. Almost every weekend, there would be a legal thriller, or World War II drama, or decent comedy that we could enjoy together. Just at random, looking up the fall of 1993, let’s see: The Fugitive, The Firm, Sleepless in Seattle, In the Line of Fire, Manhattan Murder Mystery. Ok, perhaps not quite The Quiet Man, but not a bad way to spend a weekend. Then came the superhero multiverse megafranchises, and I don’t think my dad and I have been back to the theaters since…

Well, if you are in the same boat, I’ve got good news! For the first time in ages, I can recommend a new grown up movie. I suppose it must take an awful long time for people to grow up in Hollywood, because this one was just made by a 94 year old.

Clint Eastwood’s latest, Juror #2, is well worth your time. No, it isn’t a sequel to Juror #1, but since only such mindless sequels are now permitted in your local theater, you’ll have to watch it at home - I believe it is available on Amazon, Apple TV, and several other of the countless streaming networks out there.

Be warned, don’t let the title or the courtroom trappings fool you - if you go in expecting a realistic legal drama, you’ll spend half the movie yelling at the judge (which, in fairness, given the absolute corruption of our dirty stinking rotten justice system, may make the movie all the more realistic after all). Have patience: the legal liberties taken with the jury deliberations are done in order to set up several fascinating moral dilemmas.

The short version is that we are at a murder trial and, as the case proceeds, it begins to dawn on one of the jurors that he himself, and not the defendant, may be the man the eyewitness saw at the scene of the crime. On the night in question - a dark and stormy one, many years ago, on a narrow bridge over a deadly ravine - the juror in all innocence thought he had hit a deer with his car. Now he begins to doubt…

Yet Juror #2 is not the only character with an uncomfortable conscience. There are other jurors who recognize the defendant’s gang tattoos and are willing to look past reasonable doubt to take a bad man off the streets. Then there is the prosecutor, whose career depends on this conviction, and who is certain of the defendant’s guilt… well, until the doubts start to creep in.

It’s a wonderful film, because it lets you do what grown up art is supposed to: you get to imagine yourself in the characters’ shoes, and ask, if it were me, what would I do? Would I sacrifice my family, my baby’s childhood, to save an innocent man from prison? Would I sacrifice my career, my future, to free a bad man and imprison a good one? Do I believe that the truth really matters?

Eastwood has come a long way. Supposedly this is his final movie, and he does not pull his punches. Towards the end, we see the prosecutor staring at a sign on the courthouse wall, one she has sat before every day of her career. Eastwood makes sure we understand that she’s looking at it as if for the first time: “In God We Trust.” From then on, we know how the movie is going to end.

Speaking of our dirty stinking rotten corrupt justice system, a few years ago Eastwood made another very good movie, Richard Jewell, a true story about the FBI’s sinister incompetence destroying an innocent man over the Atlanta Olympic bombing. It is unfortunate that this time, to show truth and justice prevailing in the courtroom, he had to resort to fiction, but I’m glad he’s ending on such a hopeful, Godly note.

Look back at that list of movies from 1993: there’s an Eastwood movie there, and another senior citizen jazz enthusiast as well, Woody Allen. Both have been making movies for decades. I’m an unabashed Allen fan, so if I had to choose between their primes, it’s Sleeper and Annie Hall for me. Yet the now 89 year old Allen is fundamentally bound and restricted in his art by his aggressive anti-theism. Manhattan Murder Mystery back in 93 may have been his last truly enjoyable film, and in the decades since, despite his movie-a-year-pace he is still stuck in the same old, hopeless, existentialist rut he already perfectly articulated in films like Manhattan or Crimes and Misdemeanors: the universe is irrational, there is no justice or truth, just what feels right, it’s all cosmic coincidences, try and make the best of it. Meanwhile, Eastwood, who spent much of the 1970s making movies with an orangutan, has channeled a lifetime of movie making into one final film pointing his audience’s eyes towards the eternal justice of our Heavenly Father. I don’t know if the two are friends, but if they are, here’s hoping that some evening, in between great jazz numbers, Woody takes the time to learn something from his elder, who has cast simian sidekicks aside and has proven to be, in his tenth decade, the far more mature filmmaker.

Until then, happy new year, and I hope y’all enjoy the film!