Case study

Judgement is passed on capitalist
Russia in revamped remake 12

JUROR FUROR: 12

by CHRISTOPHER SYKES

Oscar-winning director Nikita Mikhalkov (Burnt by the Sun) makes a triumphant return—both behind the camera and on screen as the captivating jury foreman—in 12, a very clever (and very loose) adaptation of Sidney Lumet’s 1957 classic 12 Angry Men.

Racial prejudice remains at the film’s heart as a young Muslim Chechen (Apti Magamaev) is accused of the brutal murder of his adoptive father, a Russian military officer. The jury, similar to the original film, appears ready to incarcerate the teenager after only a few minutes of half-serious deliberation only to find one dissenting voice when the ballots are tallied. As a unanimous vote is needed, the stage is set for a more intricate look into the case. The dissident juror (a soft-spoken Sergei Makovetsky in the Henry Fonda role) thusly proceeds to convince the other jurors that there’s more to the case than meets the eye.

The claustrophobic feel of the original has been shelved in favour of a more prop-friendly environment. The jurors spend their time recreating key elements of testimony in a spacious elementary school gym, surely a nod by Mikhalkov to the Beslan tragedy.

As the men begin to deconstruct the murder, each stumbles upon a past memory that conveniently convinces themselves of the Chechen’s innocence. The 12 nameless men burst into long soliloquies to chronicle their own perilous pasts: an engineer describes his descent into rampant alcoholism and his subsequent salvation by a woman he meets on the subway while an elderly Jewish man tells the tale of his father’s should’ve-been ill-fated love affair with the wife of a Nazi officer stationed in Lithuania.

If these incredible stories can be true, their argument is, then surely it’s possible the boy is being set up to take the fall. Each story plays at the political conscience of modern day Russia since the fall of communism, and as there are 12 stories, it takes awhile (the film clocks in at 159 minutes). Several scenes are heavy on the schmaltz, but ultimately the film is not bogged down by sentimentality due to Mikhalkov’s masterful direction and the fluidity of the all-male cast.

12 OPENS THIS FRIDAY, MARCH 20