12 Angry Men - Film Review

Viet Nguyen

Speech

Julia Hunt

12 Angry Men

In the film 12 Angry Men, group-decision making is the central focus as twelve jurors try to reach a unaimous decision to save a boy’s life while deliberating after the closing arguments of a murder trial.

One of the strength of the group is the determination. They argued in a non-airconditioning which is irritating to complete the deliberations as directed by the judge in the case. Another strength of the group was the jurors were in the mid-30s, they have experience and also they have variations in personality but most of all, the communication between each other is the strongest strength in this group. There is a good steady flow of dialog between each other, also well-organized by the leader of who gets to talk in each turn. This helps them reach the decision in the end of the movie.

One of the weakess of group decision-making is pressure to conform. Each opinion of the person in the jury room is important. They will be accepted and view as an asset, and will ten to be considerd in the decision-making. In the initial vote, there are some quiet people, they just want to give the verdict and go on with their life, but there are also some aggressive people (juror 3). These people made the room chaos and hard to reach a group decision-making. Also stubborn and not listening to what other said are not contributed to the decision-making.

During the movie, we can see two different types of leaders among the jury. The first was the desinated leader, the foreman. He was appointed to be the spokesman of the group. He used the democatic style of leadership. He proposed the method and let the other vote; he also seems to listen to the other then contributed to the conversation. The second one was the Juror 8. He was the only one vote not-guilty from the beginning. He brought up the inconsistent points and he let the other jurors start talking about it. In the meantime he always stay calm and focused unlike the other juror.Throughout the movie, we can see some hidden agendas. The Juror 7 wanted the court case to be done as fast as possible so that he could attend a ball game. He even changed his mind in the middle of the movie  to not-guilty saying that he was sick of all the talking, but the main reason is he wanted to speed thing up to end it. The Juror 3 had a bad relationship with his son made him want to put the boy in the electric chair because he thought after all the cared he gave to his son, his son still hit him in the face, the boy would have killed his father. Juror 5 is a slum so that in the beginning of the movie, he is ashamed of where he came from so he didn’t speak but after hearing all the criticization, he spoke up and contributed to the decision-making. If I have a chance to be the leader of the group, I will ask them to stay calm during the conversation. I also ask them to give their opinion why they pledge the boy guilty. Also I will remind them to stay neutral and not bring any emotional or the thing they have to do in life into the topic. Last but not least, I will ask the to stay serious and focus on the topic because throughout the movie you see the juror 7 always talked about the game he’s gonna attend later that day, and during the talk of the juror 8, there are 2 jurors playing games. In my opinion, the most effective communicators in the group was juror 8 because he always stay calm and focus, and he listened to every juror’s opinion then he slowly pointed out the wrong evidence by desmontrating and recreating the night of the murder. He always persistent with his idea even though juror 7 tried to talk him into change his verdict into guilty. The least effective was juror 3 because he let emotional and his bad relationship with his son into the decision-making. All he did were yelling and imtimidating the other jurors. I think if the each one of them try to listen to what the other opinion and not yelling, it will help them solve the problem and reach the decision faster