"Actor: Joseph Sweeney"

• Twelve Angry Men | DVD | (19/03/2001) from £5.82   |  Saving you £7.17 (123.20%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Sidney Lumet's directorial debut Twelve Angry Men remains a tense, atmospheric (though slightly manipulative and stagey) courtroom thriller, in which the viewer never sees a trial and the only action is verbal. As he does in his later corruption commentaries such as Serpico or Q & A, Lumet focuses on the lonely one-man battles of a protagonist whose ethics alienate him from the rest of jaded society. As the film opens, the seemingly open-and-shut trial of a young Puerto Rican accused of murdering his father with a knife has just concluded and the 12-man jury retires to their microscopic, sweltering quarters to decide the verdict. When the votes are counted, 11 men rule guilty, while one--played by Henry Fonda, again typecast as another liberal, truth-seeking hero--doubts the obvious. Stressing the idea of "reasonable doubt", Fonda slowly chips away at the jury, who represent a microcosm of white, male society--exposing the prejudices and preconceptions that directly influence the other jurors' snap judgments. The tight script by Reginald Rose (based on his own teleplay) presents each juror vividly using detailed soliloquies, all which are expertly performed by the film's flawless cast. Still, it's Lumet's claustrophobic direction--all sweaty close-ups and cramped compositions within a one-room setting--that really transforms this contrived story into an explosive and compelling nail-biter. --Dave McCoy, Amazon.com

• 12 Angry Men | Blu Ray | (15/05/2017) from £21.39   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  SIDNEY LUMET'S UNPARALLELED TRIAL DRAMA STARRING HENRY FONDA ONE OF THE TEN MOST POPULAR FILMS OF ALL TIME, ACCORDING TO IMDB.COM! 12 Angry Men, by SIDNEY LUMET (Network), may be the most radical big-screen courtroom drama in cinema history. A behind-closed-doors look at the American legal system as riveting as it is spare, the iconic adaptation of Reginald Rose's teleplay stars HENRY FONDA (Young Mr. Lincoln) as the initially dissenting foreman on a jury of white men ready to pass judgment on a Puerto Rican teenager charged with murdering his father. What results is a saga of epic proportions that plays out in real time over ninety minutes in one sweltering room. Lumet's electrifying snapshot of 1950s America on the verge of change is one of the great feature-film debuts. SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES: New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack Frank Schaffner's 1955 television version, with an introduction by Ron Simon, director of the Paley Centre for Media Studies 12 Angry Men: From Television to the Big Screen, a video essay by film scholar Vance Kapley comparing the Sidney Lumet and Schaffner versions Archival interviews with Lumet New interview about the director with writer Walter Bernstein New interview with Simon about television writer Reginald Rose New interview with cinematographer John Bailey in which he discusses cinematographer Boris Kaufman Tragedy in a Temporary Town (1956), a teleplay directed by Lumet and written by Rose Original theatrical trailer PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by writer and law professor Thane Rosenbaum Click Images to Enlarge

• 12 Angry Men | Blu Ray | (18/04/2023) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A