Juror No. 2: A Review - Guilty of Moviemaking Malpractice

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Another in a long line of weak cinematic efforts from director Clint Eastwood. Shallow, vapid and lazy, this movie is a made-for-tv mistake.

In the first season of NBC’s acclaimed sitcom 30 Rock – which ran from 2007 to 2013, the character Jenna Maroney, a narcissistic, needy and aging actress, is excited to show her co-worker/friend Liz Lemon the new independent movie she is starring in, The Rural Juror, and gage Lemon’s opinion.

The title The Rural Juror elicits laughs because no one on 30 Rock can pronounce it properly…it just sounds like ruhhr-juhhr. It’s also amusing because it sounds like some generic Grisham-esque piece of courtroom garbage that Hollywood loves to churn out from time to time. Adding to the humor is the funny fact that The Rural Juror is actually based on a book written by Kevin Grisham – John Grisham’s brother.

On this episode of 30 Rock Lemon watches The Rural Juror and loathes it but spares Jenna the truth, which ultimately causes problems down the road between her and Jenna.

As anyone who knows me will tell you, I am no Liz Lemon – I’m much closer to Jack Donaghey and maybe Tracy Jordan, as I am not known for pulling punches when it comes to my opinions of film…or much else.

I kept thinking of The Rural Juror as I watched 94-year-old director Clint Eastwood’s new film, Juror No. 2, which is currently available on VOD and come December 20th will be available to stream on MAX.

Juror No.2 looks and feels like someone actually decided to make The Rural Juror…and not as a joke…despite it being unintentionally very funny. This movie has all the cinematic panache and dramatic power of a Lifetime movie you stumble across late at night and decide to use as a sleep aid.

The film, which stars Nicholas Hoult, with supporting turns from Toni Collette, J.K. Simmons, Chris Messina, Leslie Bibb and Kiefer Sutherland, tells the preposterous story of Justin, a gentle juror in a Savannah, Georgia murder trial that may know more about the case than he lets on.

I will avoid spoilers as a courtesy in order to keep potential viewer’s pure of mind before watching this movie, but I’ll only say this, the premise of this movie is completely devoid of dramatic tension – at least for me. The bottom line is that Juror No. 2 asks viewers to choose “the right thing to do” in a specific scenario and the answer to that question is painfully obvious to me…so much so that I was utterly devoid of any moral qualms about what I would do. Maybe that means I’m a psychopath…who knows?

Others may find the premise more intriguing and engaging than I did, but I found it to be ethically obtuse and dramatically anemic.

Eastwood is one of the more-odd directors of the 21st century. He is going strong and consistently making movies well into his nineties, which is a great credit to him. Because he is so old, and let’s be frank, so close to death, critics and Hollywood tend to treat him with kid gloves, so he gets undeserved glowing reviews and awards consideration (and even wins), but the reality is his movies are, for the most part, awful to the point of being embarrassing.

In the last twenty years Eastwood has made 17 movies…which is extraordinary…but unfortunately none of the movies are anywhere near extraordinary. I would argue that maybe two of them rise to the level of being “just ok” (Richard Jewell and Gran Torino) and even those are pretty suspect.

Juror No. 2 has all the distinct trademarks of a late Eastwood era movie. It is allergic to detail, its visuals are dull and flat, the script is trite, the dialogue atrocious, and the acting is stilted and often-times amateurish – thanks to Clint’s hands-off/minimal takes approach.

Eastwood’s ability to entice decent and even very good actors into giving abysmal performances, is front and center in Juror No. 2. For example, J.K. Simmons, someone I deeply respect, plays a juror and is unable to make his decrepit dialogue make the least bit of sense or sound remotely human.

Toni Collette is a terrific actress and here she is essentially just a caricature throwing around a bad southern accent and painting by numbers.

Nicholas Hoult is an actor I really think highly of - I thought he was brilliant in the wonderful Hulu series The Great, but here he is handcuffed by the poor script and uneven pacing and tone of the entire cinematic venture.

Bad actors, and Eastwood employs a lot of them, are painfully exposed by Eastwood’s laissez-faire directing approach.

For instance, Chris Messina, whose career is a mystery to me, gives a lifeless, uneven and thoughtless performance as an attorney in this movie. As does Kiefer Sutherland, who does his best wooden Indian imitation throughout.

As bad as Messina and Sutherland are, Adrienne C. Moore and Cedric Yarbrough, who play jurors, are so bad they make Messina and Sutherland look like Sir Laurence Olivier and Marlon Brando. Yikes.

Juror No. 2 runs for two hours…and it is a long two-hours. While watching with my wife I paused the movie to go to the bathroom let out an audible groan when I saw that only 50 minutes had passed…it felt like we were on hour three of this son of a bitch.

Juror No. 2 is The Rural Juror. In other words, it is a joke but no one is allowed to laugh. That said, I literally did laugh out loud on numerous occasions while watching this thing as it got more and more inane as it unfolded.

Look, I like Clint Eastwood. He was a fantastic movie star. I also think he used to make very good and sometimes great movies. For example, Unforgiven is an absolute masterpiece, as is The Outlaw Josey Wales. High Plains Drifter and The Pale Rider are top notch. Everything else, including his Oscar-winning movies Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby, are, at best, middling movies.

The truth is that because I like the guy I’d like to think that Clint has one more Unforgiven in him even at age 94. After watching the moviemaking malpractice that is Juror No. 2, the fantasy of a Clint return to greatness isn’t just dying on the vine, it is as dead as a door nail…and there is no mystery as to who committed the murder.

©2024

The Mule: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. An underwhelming dramatic misfire from Clint Eastwood that never lives up to its intriguing premise or its cinematic promise.

The Mule, written by Nick Schenk and directed by Clint Eastwood, is the true story of Leo Sharp, a war veteran in his late 80’s who becomes a drug courier for a Mexican drug cartel. The film stars Eastwood as Leo, with supporting turns from Bradley Cooper, Dianne Wiest, Michael Pena, Laurence Fishburne and Andy Garcia.

Clint Eastwood is royalty out here in Hollywood, and rightfully so. The reasons for his kingly status are pretty obvious, it is because he has been a huge box office star, a cultural icon and an Oscar winning filmmaker as well as the fact that he has been around forever and has made lots of people lots of money, something which Hollywood REALLY likes.

As esteemed as Eastwood’s career has been, it is his longevity that has afforded him the ability to be alive while the industry lauds his career accomplishments. For instance, Eastwood won his Best Director Oscar for his genre defining and closing western masterpiece Unforgiven at the age of 62, it felt like the final chapter of a remarkable career. But then Eastwood won Best Director again in 2004 at the age of 74 for the less than award worthy Million Dollar Baby in what most definitely felt like a lifetime achievement award, a gold statuette from Hollywood to say thank you to Clint one more time before he died. But then the unexpected happened again…Clint Eastwood didn’t die. He didn’t fade away. He didn’t retire. To his credit, he kept making movies…and he kept making people money because he was always on time and always on budget, which is the true secret to Tinseltown success.

As great as Eastwood’s Unforgiven was, and it is truly one of the great pieces of cinema, the truth is that this Emperor of Hollywood has no clothes in regards to his later works, which have been decidedly sub-par and shoddy. Yes, he and his movies have won awards and made money, but the bottom line is this, Eastwood’s late career movies haven’t been good films. A good test of this is that you can watch Unforgiven a dozen times over and still come away with something new each time, but if you try and watch any of Eastwood’s later films, like Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, American Sniper, more than once, you are struck by the glaring lack of craft, skill and artistry on display. His late career films, even ones with a lot of accolades and box office bang, are cinematically tenuous and artistically shallow. All of Eastwood’s golden years movies are paper thin, and upon closer examination reveal themselves to be really shoddy pieces of work.

A hysterical example of that shoddiness is the infamous fake baby in American Sniper, but the problems with Eastwood films runs much deeper than using a fake baby, it is why he used a fake baby that causes the problem. The fake baby came about because the two babies lined up to shoot that day fell through, so instead of shifting on the fly and rescheduling the baby scenes, Eastwood stubbornly stuck to schedule and budget, and shot with a doll instead of a live baby. What this silly little example shows is that Eastwood is more interested in getting it done (on time and on budget) than getting it done right.

Now, the uninitiated and/or “regular people” might think, “hey, why is getting something done on budget and on time bad?” Well, it isn’t bad in and of itself, and it is a wise move in terms of making a living and making a lot of powerful friends in Hollywood, as a minimal talent like Ron Howard has learned, the problem is when it is craft that is the victim of a strict adherence to budget and time. Think of it this way…what if a construction company building the bridge you drive over every day cared more about being on time and on budget than getting it done right. In that case, cutting corners means the bridge will be structurally unsound and will, over time, collapse…which is a perfect metaphor for Eastwood’s later films, as they are structurally unsound and collapse over time and repeated viewings. You wouldn’t want to drive on that bridge, just like I don’t want to suffer through a shoddy Eastwood film.

Another problem born out of Eastwood’s adherence to tight schedules and budgets is his preference for doing a minimal amount of takes of each scene. This approach works on a film like Unforgiven because you have a murderer’s row of old pros like Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, Richard Harris and Eastwood himself carrying the film. This approach works less well on films like Gran Torino, where Eastwood cast non-actors and amateurs, or American Sniper, where much of the cast were less experienced, less talented and less skilled actors.

Actors with less experience need direction, and direction comes about over the course of a few takes. Eastwood’s hands off approach may keep his schedule and budget in tact, but it also makes his movies feel second rate and amateurish.

What is so frustrating to me is that Eastwood’s films all feel like they SHOULD be good, and in theory they are good as they have good ideas, good stories and often times good actors, but the problem is not in theory but in the execution and in the attention to detail, and that falls on Clint.

The Mule is a perfect example as the story of a 90 year old man working as a drug mule for a cartel is certainly intriguing, and so is the idea of a cultural icon, Dirty Harry or The Man With No Name, playing the role, but it is in the execution where the film stumbles and staggers.

In The Mule, Eastwood’s weaknesses are on full display, with a notable addition, Eastwood himself is so old at this point, that he himself is not much of an actor anymore, and that is a problem when he is supposed to carry this movie not only as an actor but as a director. It is asking quite a lot for an 88 year old to walk around the block, nevermind muster the energy to act in front of the camera and direct from behind it.

It is for these reasons that The Mule is a bit of a conflicted and underwhelming hodge-podge of a movie. To be fair, The Mule could have been a whole lot worse, but that certainly doesn’t mean it was great or even good. The frustrating thing for me is that The Mule could have been great. Maybe if Eastwood just acted in it and there was a more visionary director at the helm, then it could have risen to worthy heights, but as it is, the film is a disappointment.

Eastwood’s acting is painful to watch. There are moments when he flashes back to being the Outlaw Josey Wales (another great movie) or Dirty Harry for a second, but those glimpses quickly fade into oblivion and are replaced by an actor pushing too much or not enough. Clint never firmly grasps the character, which could be due to the script, and so he staggers around from comedy to tragedy and back again.

Eastwood isn’t helped by the script or by his own directing, both of which leave a lot to be desired. There are some scenes with painfully obtuse exposition, like where Leo, out of the blue, tells a stranger that he has driven all over the country and never…NEVER got a ticket or pulled over. Leo shares this bit of information about five times in less than thirty seconds and then the stranger propositions him to be a drug mule. Yikes.

Leo’s relationship with his wife, kid and grandkid are so hollow their dialogue could echo. There is not a single, genuine, grounded human emotion or encounter in the entire film. Not one. Every interaction rings false and forced.

The characters are one dimensional card board cutouts, but that would make sense since the plot is equally thin. There are all the usual bad movie tropes in there, the interrogation scene where tough guy cops get a bad guy to flip, the drug lords living their decadent and lavish lifestyle, scantily clad women included, and the family drama of a bitter ex-wife and daughter, and the hope of a new beginning with a granddaughter. The whole movie is painfully predictable and is sort of like a amalgamation of every bad drug movie and family turmoil movie ever made.

Besides Clint, the rest of the cast are less than stellar. Bradley Cooper does the best of the bunch, but even he is hamstrung by a nebulous character. Dianne Wiest does her best, but the script does her no favors. The rest of the cast are pretty dreadful, from the tattoed tough guys to the non-tattoed tough guys to the granddaughter with a heart of gold, none of them seem even remotely believable.

There is one thing that stood out to me about The Mule, and that is that it contains the single worst scene I’ve witnessed in a film this entire year. The scene is not only remarkably poorly executed in terms of the writing, directing, acting and editing, but it is remarkable because it doesn’t need to be in the film at all. I won’t say what scene it is, but I will tell you that it comes very near the end, and you’ll know it when you see it. I audibly groaned when I saw the scene, so much so that my fellow movie goers probably thought I was having a stroke…I should have been so lucky.

As hard as I am being on this movie, it actually could have been worse, and while a cinephile like me disliked it, people who aren’t quite the film snob I am, will probably enjoy it. For instance, old people love to go to the movies, and they love to see other old people in movies. So old people will probably like this movie since they get to watch someone who is most likely older than they are star in a movie. In fact, as I entered the theatre for my screening, a decrepit old lady, probably in her late 80’s, grabbed my arm as I walked past her and stopped me just to tell me “you’ll love the movie…it’s really great.” I didn’t know this woman and had no idea why she needed to share that with me or why she felt it was ok to grab my arm, but obviously she felt strongly about the film. I would love to share my review with her and hear her counter argument, but sadly, even after passionately and expertly making out with her for the majority of the movie, I never once thought to get her name or number….such is the glamorous life of an internet film critic.

In conclusion, The Mule is a formulaic film that looks and feels more like a made for tv movie than a piece of serious cinema. I am a fan of Clint Eastwood, and he is one of the all-time greats in this business, but his acting and directing fastball left him long ago, so much so that he is basically throwing a slow-pitch meatball up to the plate with The Mule. The movie is so rough around the edges and so soft in the middle that it ultimately fails to deliver much drama or any cinematic punch. If you are curious about it or are an avid fan of Eastwood, feel free to check out The Mule when it comes out on cable or Netflix for free, but avoid paying to see it at the theatre because you’ll end up feeling like The Mule kicked you in the head and stole your hard earned money if you do.

©2018