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The Juror movie review & film summary (1996)

Annie, played by Demi Moore, is a sculptor whose art consists of building boxes that you stick your hand into, to feel the strange things inside. Many observations could be made about this choice of work, but I will not make any of them. Before she even gets home from the jury selection session, a Mafia operator named the Teacher (Alec Baldwin) is inside her house, photocopying family pictures and phone numbers, and feeling up the artwork. The next day he surfaces as a so-called art buyer, who drops a check for $24,000 at her gallery and asks her out to dinner.

The Teacher doesn't mess around. He tells Annie that unless she says two little words - "not guilty" - terrible things will happen to her son and her friends. She believes him, and votes not to convict, but that's only the beginning of her nightmare.

This Teacher is a piece of work. He is suave, he is cultivated, he quotes Lao Tzu, he can talk knowledgeably about art, he builds puppets, and he is a psychopathic killer. He's obviously the smartest man in the mob, and he gets his kicks by psychologically manipulating his victims instead of just intimidating them.

Annie is foolish enough to think that maybe she can outsmart him. This does not work. In two really unnecessarily ugly scenes, the Teacher shows her how he could run down her child - and he forces her best friend to have sex with him, then kill herself. Watching that second scene, I was wondering exactly what thought process went into the theory that it was necessary to the movie.

Without revealing plot twists, I will say that the movie goes on a long while - a very long while - after the trial is over, and that a trip to the jungles of Guatemala is unnecessary, to put it mildly.

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Reinaldo Massengill

Update: 2024-05-01