TEHRAN – “12 Angry Men”, American director Sidney Lumet’s 1957 legal drama, will be reviewed at the Iranian Artists Forum in Tehran on Monday.

The film will be screened at 5 pm and lawyer and film critic Jahanbakhsh Nuria will attend the review session to discuss the topic “In Search for a Perpetrator”.

The review session will be held with contributions from the Iran Central Bar Association.

“12 Angry Men” follows a jury of 12 men in a New York City murder trial, which is frustrated by a single member whose skeptical caution forces them to consider the evidence before jumping to a hasty verdict.

The film starring Henry Fonda, who also produced the film along with Reginald Rose, Lee J. Cobb, Ed Begley, E. G. Marshall and Jack Warden, explores many techniques of consensus-building and the difficulties encountered in the process among this group of men whose range of personalities adds to the intensity and conflict.

The movie forces the audience to evaluate their own self-image by observing the personalities, experiences, and actions of the jurors. It is also notable for its almost exclusive use of one set, where all but three minutes of the film take place.

On its first release, “12 Angry Men” received critical acclaim. 

A. H. Weiler of The New York Times wrote, “It makes for taut, absorbing, and compelling drama that reaches far beyond the close confines of its jury room setting.”

His observation of the twelve men was that “their dramas are powerful and provocative enough to keep a viewer spellbound.”

Variety called it an “absorbing drama” with acting that was “perhaps the best seen recently in any single film” and Philip K. Scheuer of the Los Angeles Times declared it a “tour de force in movie making.”

The film was selected as the second-best courtroom drama ever by the American Film Institute during their AFI’s 10 Top 10 list, just after “To Kill a Mockingbird”, and is the highest-rated legal drama on Rotten Tomatoes’ Top 100 Movies of All Time.

Photo: A scene from “12 Angry Men” by Sidney Lumet.

MMS/YAW