12 Angry Men is probably my favorite film of all time, so I was both excited and hesitant to get into this one. I wanted it to feel like a modern adaptation grabbing the roots of the true crime era.
Unfortunately though, it mostly felt like a knock-off, taking the successful archetype of 12 Angry Men far too closely, down to hyper-specific details even as close as the specific seat of the lone dissenting juror and the premise of "anonymously voting and if I'm the only one who still dissents, I'll let it go."
I did have the privilege of hearing the director and one key actor do a Q&A afterward, and it was refreshing to hear they were paying homage to 12 Angry Men. But in their comments they mentioned they were originally filming a docu-drama and when they were unable to make that work, they pivoted to this model and wrote the script in 11 days.
I'd say the script was successful for a quick write-up, but I can't help but picture they had the 12 Angry Men script next to them for that re-write. They were proud of how quickly they were able to pull this together after the pivot, and I don't want to diminish that, but I do feel time could have helped reduce confusion, increase originality, and drive it further into that modern adaptation they were going for.
12 Angry Men is probably my favorite film of all time, so I was both excited and hesitant to get into this one. I wanted it to feel like a modern adaptation grabbing the roots of the true crime era.
Unfortunately though, it mostly felt like a knock-off, taking the successful archetype of 12 Angry Men far too closely, down to hyper-specific details even as close as the specific seat of the lone dissenting juror and the premise of "anonymously voting and if I'm the only one who still dissents, I'll let it go."
I did have the privilege of hearing the director and one key actor do a Q&A afterward, and it was refreshing to hear they were paying homage to 12 Angry Men. But in their comments they mentioned they were originally filming a docu-drama and when they were unable to make that work, they pivoted to this model and wrote the script in 11 days.
I'd say the script was successful for a quick write-up, but I can't help but picture they had the 12 Angry Men script next to them for that re-write. They were proud of how quickly they were able to pull this together after the pivot, and I don't want to diminish that, but I do feel time could have helped reduce confusion, increase originality, and drive it further into that modern adaptation they were going for.
