His 1954 teleplay Twelve Angry Men established his name in the literary world, and is his most famous work. Rose achieved literary success as an adult when he sold his first teleplay Bus to Nowhere to CBS in 1950. He rose to the rank of first lieutenant, while serving from 1942 to 1946. After college, he served in the US Army during World War II. He attended City College (now incorporated into the City University of New York). His, is a study in deliberation and logic not show-pony stuff, but hell that never WAS Fonda was it? This is a great great movie, as is evidenced by the extremely high user-vote worldwide.Reginald Rose was born in 1920 in Manhattan and spent his youth, high school, college years, and adult life in New York City. I think however he was to a great degree playing himself here, not to an audience. Some have denounced Fonda's role as being acceptable rather than awesome.
He had of course superb acting talent at his disposal although some of the most memorable performances are from the lesser players. Lumet, working within a minimal budget here, delivers unstinting brilliance in both direction, character portrayal and script interpretation. The thinker, the sensitive man, the arrogant bully, the opportunist, the mentally challenged loudmouth, the slimeball, the emotionally withdrawn, the sheep etc - they're all here! Welcome to society folks! I dislike society in the main - doubtless a reason I found this film to be such a revelation.even when I was barely into my teens! 12 ANGRY MEN also pinpoints the shortcomings of the law, how "truth" can be so intrinsically left-field and unintentionally flawed. Whether or not he may WANT to is a different matter. Everyone can identify with at least ONE of those characters. Marshall, Jack Warden etc etc amongst them! Their very "ordinariness" is where the film succeeded. If you were to gather unto yourselves ANY twelve jurors at random, you would most likely be able to pinpoint the Henry Fonda, Lee Cobb, E. Whether or not that would actually work with TODAY'S audiences is another discussion! What we have here are twelve everyday Mr Joe Blows, summoned together on a jury panel to decide a defendant's guilt or innocence with regards to a murder charge. To begin with, the ability to not only sustain interest but to command the viewer's attention for basically its entire running time within a setting of principally just one room, borders on the inspired. The brilliance of the film is evident in so many aspects.
Even had it BEEN as good - so what? There could be few, if ANY film-goers reading this who are unaware of the plotline and in any event many others have re-hashed this for you.
The late 90's TV remake was quite adequate though totally unnecessary and in the upshot proved simply that updating a film for updating's sake is really an exercise in futility. This once-in-a-generation masterpiece simply has no equal.
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