HOLLYWOOD—I had some problems with Clint Eastwood’s latest film “Juror No. 2.” I thought this would be a movie I would thoroughly enjoy because I have been an Eastwood fan as long as I can remember. “Unforgiven” is a classic, “Million Dollar Baby” blew my socks off, I thoroughly enjoyed “Gran Torino” and thought Eastwood was robbed for a Best Actor and Best Director Oscar nomination. With that said, his latest outing tries to be something that it is NOT, an exemplary legal drama.

There is a movie that came out in 1957, “12 Angry Men” that is what I would call the pinnacle, and I mean pinnacle of the legal drama. It was dramatic as hell; the characters were well developed and the narrative engulfed you in a way that had you hooked. To me it is the true testament of what it means to be a juror and anyone who has actually served on a jury understands the intricacies of such. Movies try to portray things one way, but all is not as it seems, when you are chosen to be on a jury.

I will give Eastwood credit for highlighting that notion of jurors who simply go along with the rest because they don’t care. They just want to settle on a verdict so they can get back to their life which is such a disappointment. Guess what? “Juror No. 2” falls for that cliché so much to the point that it lost my interest before the movie actually started. You know it’s bad within the first 20 minutes of the movie you have already checked out.

Why? I already knew what was going on before the narrative started to get moving. The film follows Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult), a journalist who is called for jury duty in the midst of his wife being very pregnant and high risk. He tries to get out of his civic duty, but not able to, to his chagrin. As the trial gets underway for a man accused of murdering his girlfriend and leaving her in a wooded ditch, we learn IMMEDIATELY all may not be as it seems.

When you spill a massive narrative point before the movie even gets going, how does the filmmaker expect to maintain the audience’s interest? That was the one thing “Juror No. 2” so got wrong for me. All the breadcrumbs were given right away before the audience could make a decision. Are we to care about these jurors? I didn’t care ABOUT ANY OF THEM. They are not developed at all, you have a few angry people because they don’t want to be there, what’s new about that for jury duty.

Then you have the jury foreperson, who thinks they know everything, but knows absolutely nothing. Justin is a recovering alcoholic, it feels like he is egging the audience and the jurors to reexamine their beliefs, but what is the actual intent, without me spoiling things for you. The first two acts of the movie are terrible to me, I lost complete interest, by the third act I was intrigued because it raised a question of morality which I think was the movie’s overall goal, but does it land?

I don’t think so. I’ve seen a movie like this before, and unfortunately “12 Angry Men” did it a lot better with better nuance that was more captivating in the process. Eastwood is still a solid director and there isn’t a lack of acting talent with Toni Collete, Kiefer Sutherland, Chris Messina, Leslie Bibb and Zoey Deutch. The problem is the movie doesn’t deliver a verdict that satisfies the audience in my opinion, no matter the caliber on the screen and that is such a disappointment.