12 Angry Men Movie Trailers and Reviews

12 Angry Men (1957)

Starring: Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, Ed Begley, E.G. Marshall, Jack Warden, Jack Klugman

Director: Sidney Lumet

Release Date: April 13th, 1957

Synopsis: The defence and the prosecution have rested and the jury is filing into the jury room to decide if a young Spanish-American is guilty or innocent of murdering his father. What begins as an open and shut case of murder soon becomes a mini-drama of each of the jurors’ prejudices and preconceptions about the trial, the accused, and each other. Based on the play, all of the action takes place on the stage of the jury room.

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12 Angry Men Movie Trailer

About the Movie

12 Angry Men is a 1957 American drama film adapted from a play. Directed by Sidney Lumet, the film tells the story of a jury made up of 12 men as they deliberate the guilt or innocence of a defendant on the basis of reasonable doubt. The film is notable for its almost exclusive use of one set: with the exception of two short scenes at the beginning and the end of the film set on the steps of the court building and two short scenes in an adjoining washroom, the entire movie takes place in the jury room. The book written by the author is also used in the Ontario Cirriculm

Apart from two of the jurors swapping names while leaving the courthouse, no names are used in the film: the defendant is referred to as “the boy” and the witnesses as the “old man” and “the lady across the street”.

In 2007, 12 Angry Men was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.