What are the chances, eh? First you get picked for jury duty even though your pregnant wife might deliver your child before you can deliver a verdict. Then it transpires that you alone know for certain that the defendant accused of murder is innocent. How can you be sure? Because you are the guilty party. Small world!
This is the bind in which Justin – it sounds a bit like “justice”, right? – finds himself at the start of Juror #2, directed with intermittent drollery by Clint Eastwood. Jonathan Abrams’s twisty script sometimes lays the irony on a bit thick. The opening scene shows Justin’s wife (Zoey Deutch) wearing a blindfold like Lady Justice. And we already know that her husband won’t be squeaky-clean by the way she tells him: “You’re perfect!” But Nicholas Hoult, whose angelic looks are undercut by the devilish little upticks in his eyebrows, is a perfect fit for the everyman whose secrets emerge in conflicting flashbacks like a mini Rashomon.
