We the Jury (1996)

I'll tell you why so serious

Best movie of this year hands down!

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

(Mild Spoilers) Tension packed made for TV courtroom drama thats refreshingly lacking, in it's non-politically-correct script, the usual and predictable ending that were so used to seeing in these kinds of justice films. Famous Emmy Awarding winning talk show host Waynne Atwood follows her cheating husband Gregory Toland to his lovers Jane Carlisle's apartment and then catching him with his paths down blows him away with a bullet in his head. There's no doubt that Waynne shot and killed her husband since she immediately called the police and turned herself in. What the trial is all about is the mental state that she was in at the time of the shooting. At the trial Waynn's lawyer Wilfred Francicus makes the case that his client was driven to the brink of insanity by the abuse, both physically and mentally, that she suffered at the hands of her husband Greg and was not in control of her actions at the time of the shooting. The prosecution brought out the fact that Waynne was cold and calculating in her action to the point where she calmly told her rival, Jane Carlisle, for her husband's Greg's affection not to worry about being killed she thought of killing her at first but now changed her mind. This set the stage for the last half of of movie that exploded with both rage and fury in the jury room and divided the jurors, for the most part, on gender lines. The are men for conviction feeling that Waynne was totally in control of her faculties when she killed Greg. The women on the jury feel that she was driven to the point where she didn't know right from wrong and was not responsible for what she did thus she was innocent by reason of insanity. The evidence is skillfully presented and analyzed by the jurors and it later turns out that one of them, the foreman Karl Weber, is more interested in making a buck on the case, after it's over by writing a book about it, then in finding out if Waynne is innocent or guilty.The final ending doesn't come as a shock at all because we the audience see the evidence, like the jury did, and realize that the conclusion the jurors came up with was the only fair and just verdict in the Waynne Atwood/Gregopry Toland case.Kelly McGillis is wonderful as the forewoman of the jury and it was touching ,as well as painful, to watch how she didn't allow her emotions to take over her logic and also how she kept the rest of the jurors from almost resorting to violence during the emotionally packed deliberations. Both Conrad Dunne & Nicky Guadagni as jurors Rafael Ramos & Beryl Granger were outstanding as the two jurors with totally different views about the case and who were involved in the most explosive scenes in the movie. Even they as divided as they were on Waynne's guilt or innocence came to the same conclusion when the evidence, that was right there in front of their noses but what they didn't at first notice, presented itself to them.Outstanding courtroom drama that's every bit as good as the 1957 Henry Fonda courtroom classic "12 Angry Men" where in this movie it was seven women and five men who came to the very startling and righteous verdict at the end of the film.

I'm biased. I like good courtroom dramas. This is a good one. But it also gives a tremendous insight into what really goes on in the jury room. Fully half the film covers the jury deliberations yet it does not drag for a moment. I have one large complaint and that is the fact that Toronto again has allowed itself to be prostituted as the setting for an American city. Toronto's pretensions of being a "world class city" are worthless so long as this sort of cinematic pimping continues. Is there any other major city in the world (outside Canada) that demeans itself in this manner. London is always London. New York is New York. But Toronto invariably is Cincinatti or Boston. It's especially upsetting since CTV was one of the backers of this movie. It's especially obscene to see the US flag flying in front of the Canadian Government offices on Front Street. Having said that, it's still a compelling movie, well scripted and well produced with some excellent performances

Quite an entertaining little film as long as you don't look too closely at the facts. The cast all did their best to keep the story flowing. Several interesting characters involved, though, in my opinion, most bigoted people are not prepared to change their minds as easily as these seem to do. DOWNSIDE: If this is typical of the American Jury system the only comment I can make is "Good Luck". The trial seemed a farce, no-one even asked who the gun actually belonged to, the jury had to guess whether it was his or hers. The post-trial jurists publicity with interviews etc. I found abhorrent and open to misuse and retaliation.

What I liked about the movie was seeing the jury process in motion. Having never served on a jury, it was good to see the process portrayed as being "by the law", and the fact that there are twelve people there - each keeping the other in line. But the commercial breaks on the Lifetime Channel are distracting and the ending never gave you what I call a conclusion. It did keep my husband awake though, and he said if I was going to watch Lifetime, he was going to take a nap. :-)