Clint Eastwood’s ‘Juror #2’ is one of his best films in a decade. Why does the studio want to bury it?

More than one crime is afoot regarding “Juror #2,” which may well be the final film directed by 94-year-old Clint Eastwood.
There’s the fictional one requiring legal adjudication, as implied by the title: the alleged murder of a woman whose battered body was found in a ravine following a barroom dispute with her violent boyfriend.
And there’s the real crime that’s more of a cultural transgression: the dumping by Warner Bros. into a single Canadian theatre (Toronto’s Varsity) one of Eastwood’s best films of the past decade, part of an anemic North American rollout. Why is the studio abandoning Eastwood now, after a half-century partnership that has included such Oscar winners as “Unforgiven” and “Million Dollar Baby”?
Especially since “Juror #2” is exactly the kind of adult-oriented movie that people say they want to see in theatres, at a time when cinemas are flooded with superhero pictures, horror films and cartoons. Directed with Eastwood’s customary briskness and narrative drive, it’s a solid courtroom saga that speaks to an era where truth is increasingly up for debate and a flawed justice system seems more interested in politics than doing the right thing.
“Jury #2” mines similar reasonable-doubt drama as Sidney Lumet’s “12 Angry Men,” a classic 1957 film to which Jonathan Abrams’ screenplay owes a debt. A defendant’s guilt that appears to be a slam dunk at trial becomes increasingly less so once deliberation starts, with one juror in particular expressing doubt.
In this case it’s Nicholas Hoult’s Justin Kemp, a magazine feature writer in an unnamed Georgia city who finds himself obliged to submit to jury duty at a particularly fraught time of his life.
His wife (Zoey Deutch) is about to give birth following a high-risk pregnancy, but this doesn’t deter the judge from ordering Kemp to join 11 other jurors in deciding the fate of James Michael Sythe (Gabriel Basso), accused of murdering his girlfriend one dark and stormy night.
His girlfriend Kendall (Francesca Eastwood, Clint’s daughter), stormed off into a midnight downpour along a poorly lit road following a loud dispute in a bar called Rowdy’s Hangout with Sythe, a former gang member who is anything but a sympathetic figure.
Sythe followed her — there’s proof on a bar patron’s smartphone video — and Kendall’s body was discovered the next day by a hiker.
It looks like a cut-and-dried case, one that prosecutor Faith Killebrew (Toni Collette) is all too willing to pursue, since she’s running for district attorney on a law-and-order platform.
Kemp’s fellow jurors think so, too, and they initially seem willing to convict Sythe without so much as a cursory discussion. But Kemp has a guilty conscience that soon emerges, along with an unwillingness to declare Sythe guilty.
Turns out, Kemp was also in Rowdy’s that night, fighting depression and a drinking problem. He left the bar about the same time as Kendall and Sythe.
While driving in the dark and rain, Kemp hit what he assumed was a deer — but what if it was Kendall?
Even though we learn all this early in the film, Eastwood and Abrams maintain suspense by carefully doling out information that could settle the matter of guilt or innocence.
Hoult is good as the embattled Kemp, even though he’s locked into a facial expression that suggests a dog caught fouling a living room rug.
Even better is Collette as the avenging prosecutor, who is driven by ambition but also alert to irregularities in the case that tweak her conscience.
Also great is J.K. Simmons as another juror, a retired homicide detective who wonders why the cops immediately arrested Sythe for murder when Kendall’s death looks to be more of a hit and run.
Together they help make “Juror #2” a better film than Warner Bros. apparently knows it has, even if the movie includes more than a few eye-rolling plot turns — not to mention an underwritten lawyer character played by Kiefer Sutherland, who drops in merely to offer a few legal facts.
If this is indeed Eastwood’s directorial swan song, and he hasn’t confirmed that it is, he can feel good about a job well done. He may be heading toward the century mark, but he’s still capable of making a movie worth watching.
And he may have made sly reference to this fact in one of the film’s song choices: Toby Keith’s “As Good As I Once Was.”
That’s telling them, Clint!