12 Angry Men Movie Analysis Essay

The 1957 film version of 12 Angry Men depicts the nature of a small group setting. Within this film, we can see the group as a system, the development of group climate, and the different roles portrayed in a group. Eleven out of the twelve jurors voted the boy on trial guilty when they were initially asked their vote. Later throughout the movie, the group went into detail on the trail, thanks to Juror 8, and eventually changed their vote. If it weren't for the call for communication on the topic, the boy who was being tried would have been sentenced to death.

The movie “12 Angry Men” by William Friedkin, was a movie that's purpose was to send the viewers a message and that message was to have the audience ask themselves “are facts really facts?”. At the beginning of the movie 11 out of the 12 jurors were confident and sure that “the kid” was guilty of stabbing his father to death, but as the movie continues they start to actually realize that the facts may not be facts after all. The director also plays with the background affects (lighting) to show a change in behavior and attitude in the characters throughout the film, by doing this it allows the audience to become captured but the setting and dialogue.

In the movie, Twelve Angry Men, all of the characters have their own specific personalities. Jurors 1 through 12 all have gone through different life situations and come from different beginnings. On a certain level, the jurors are all connected to each other in one way or another. That would be the strength of the justice system. It brings people together that no one would have ever thought were compatible to work with each other.

When watching the move 12 Angry Men, we see different views from the jurors such as social influence, majority influence, specific motivation and egoism. This shows different attitudes and opinions the jurors have. One man out of twelve jurors decides to take on a room of eleven stubborn jurors as given the verdict of not guilty. The eleven jurors elected for the kid to be guilty and refused to think otherwise until the one non guilty juror decided to step up and discuss the situation. The majority of the jurors seem very impatient and anxious to get out of the courtroom. They believe the one juror who is patient and wanting to discuss the situation is just wasting their time. The jurors shows many characteristics throughout the movie

The goal of the 12 jurors is to make a unanimous decision the defendant is either innocent or guilty. The jurors must make this decision based on whether the prosecutor’s evidence proved the defendant’s innocence beyond a reasonable doubt. Leadership played a large role in achieving this goal. Some of these three leadership forms were

In Reginald Rose’s 12 Angry Men there is a clear juror whom swayed the others and directly expressed his ideas. He is a “gentle man...who wants justice to be done.” Juror no.8 is the hero as his initial choice to vote not guilty locks in the boy's fate of escaping a life of prison and punishment; not excluding his persuasiveness and ideology of the morality of the other jurors. Juror no.8 single handedly voted against the grain and convinced other jurors of his logical reasons ‘it’s not easy for me to raise my hand and send a boy of to die before talking about it first’. It was heroic of him to stand out against the others and the dramatic conclusion greatly attributed to his significant factor as the vote sway from 11-1 guilty to 12-0 for not guilty. Juror no.8 helped conveyed to the other jurors the boy's innocence. Persuading jurors in a chill mannerism whist jurors 3 and 10 were angry and impatient. Over the case juror no.8 was calm and reviewed the evidence taken from the prosecution and it's flaws. Juror no.8 constantly reviewed the evidence with other jurors presenting logical

In the drama Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose, juror 8 does a good job in persuading the other jurors to listen and reconsider the evidence. He uses his rhetorical appeals to captivate the other jurors attention. He gains an authority towards the other jurors which makes them trust him more. Juror 8 deconstructs the testimony and evidence with his rhetorical appeal to make the other jurors consider the innocence of the defendant.

The classic 1957 movie 12 Angry Men delves in to a panel of twelve jurors who are deciding the life or death fate of an eighteen year old italian boy accused of stabbing his father to death. The twelve men selected as jurors are a diverse group, each coming to the table with their own socioeconomic backgrounds, personal experiences, prejudice’s, and all of this plays a role in the jurors attitudes and/or misconceptions of the accused young man. How each of the jurors, all but Juror Eight played by Henry Fonda, experiences and personalities impact their original vote of guilty is clear at the beginning of the movie with the first vote. However, from the start, Juror Eight displays confidence, and demonstrates leadership abilities utilizing

12 Angry Men is a film that plays on the psychological mind, and highlights many features of Organizational Behavior. As the jury of 12 men convene in a locked room to decide the future, or lack thereof, of a young boy accused of murdering his father, they illustrate movement through the four stages of Bruce Tuckman’s Group Development Model of Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing. Along with this model, the movie portrays the difficulties and cohesiveness that 12 different men experience as they must come together to make one single unanimous decision. In an attempt to make this decision, several examples of influential behavior are highlighted throughout the film, as the members of the Jury experience using reason, assertiveness,

When someone is on trial for murder, it can be difficult for a stranger to realize that the person on trial’s life is in the hands of a small group of people. Therefore, due to jurors often being strangers, it can be significantly difficult to put aside their biases and come to a proper consensus. In the film 12 Angry Men, the process of coming to a consensus was troubling due to Juror Three’s personal bias towards the topic. Unlike looking at the situation rationally as Juror Eight did, Juror Three brought his emotions, personal experiences, and bias into his fallacy-riddled argument.

Groupthink Groupthink can occur when people are deeply involved in a cohesive group and when the group’s overall desire for consensus overrides the individual’s own actions and thoughts (Janis, 1982). The mode of thinking playing a huge factor on many political decision making disasters, such as the Bay of Pigs, Challenger, and Columbia incident (Janis, 1982) (Morehead, Ference, & Neck, 1991) (Oberg, 2003). The film Twelve Angry Men revolves around a premise that is based on a way to overcome groupthink. From the start of the film, the interactions between the jurors already show that there was an agreement that the boy was guilty. Not a single juror had second thoughts on their choice, and even if another juror had their own doubts about the case, a person would

Idealized Influence – defined by the values, morals, and ethical principles of a leader and is manifest through behaviours that supress self interest and focus on the good of the collective.

Under majority influence, the decision making process showed symptoms of groupthink. Groupthink occurred within this particular group of men as the majority of the jurors overestimated their power and invulnerability. (Keyton, 2006) This therefore caused all eleven jurors who believed the defendant was guilty to not question any evidence or circumstances presented in the case. This was apparent throughout the film as the majority of the jurors were narrow minded coming into the jury room. This is found to be true as the jurors failed to critically examine and analyze the evidence stated in the case. All jurors except for juror # 8 took the evidence at face value and did not want to accept any other circumstances that could have happened that night the boy 's father was killed. Groupthink effected the groups cohesiveness as it was moderately high causing the group to not challenge any evidence. (Keyton, 2006)

As a community, we live in a dangerous and unpredictable world where bad, if not horrible, crimes can occur at any given moment, to anybody. Crime rates continue to grow over the years and one of the largest and fastest-growing crimes, is murder. Offenders of this horrendous crime face several possibilities and severe consequences are held in place for the accused. All murder cases are viewed carefully and repeatedly under microscopic detail and facts are gathered and presented before the court. In the 1957 movie,“12 Angry Men”, the criminal case of an eighteen year old boy who was accused of first degree murder of his father was analyzed, where twelve jurors were summoned to the courthouse and listened to the evidence presented by the prosecution and heard the defensive from the boy’s public attorney. Twelve complete strangers held this boy’s fate. The purpose of this film’s analysis is to examine the relationship and communication between these twelve jurors and what factors led the men to change their verdicts. The concepts of critical thinking, decision-making, and problem solving were crucial in this film and were unique in every juror, and this uniqueness is what created great conflict between the jurors

The different roles the 12-jury men play in the deliberation of the capital murder case is prominent. Firstly, a role can be defined as a set of expected behaviour patterns attributed to someone occupying a given position in a social unit. Different groups enforce different role requirements on individuals namely; role expectation, role perception