12 Angry Men - Analysis

12 Angry Men 

12 Angry Men was a film that became successful as soon as it hit the box office. This film offers us allot to think about on the aspects of TOK(Theory Of Knowledge). It makes us question our way of thinking and how particular moments in the past can influence decisions even in present life. Let me talk a bit about the film. 

Following the closing arguments in a murder trial, the 12 members of the jury must deliberate, with a guilty verdict meaning death for the accused, a teen. As the dozen men try to reach a unanimous decision while gathered in a room, one juror casts considerable doubt on elements of the case. Personal issues soon rise to the surface, and conflict threatens to derail the delicate process that will decide one boy's fate. A dissenting juror in a murder trial slowly manages to convince the others that the case is not as obviously clear as it seemed in court. 

The film starts of with 12 members of the jury locked in one room. The majority of them seem to suggest that this case is an open and shut one, and the verdict may be very easy to derive. They all seem to think that the boy is guilty for murdering his father. They even think it is actually a waste of time to hold the meeting because the outcome is straight forward... or so they thought. A vote is held, where Juror 8 votes not guilty, just to foster discussion on the facts of the case. We see that at first, this idea is met with disapproval, however, as the film moves on, more and more jurors turn to Juror 8’s side, as he dismantles “facts” with his careful reasoning. In the end, all the jurors are convinced of “reasonable doubt” on the boy’s guilt, and vote not guilty. That is a rough summation of the entire film. 

We know that emotion plays a strong role in making decisions in life sometimes. We come to understand that at the end Juror 3 is only motivated for the execution because of his emotions toward children. We learn that Juror 3 had a broken relationship with his son, which lead to his anger and bitterness towards youngsters, such as the accused. Also, we understand that Juror 3 may hold pity for the father of the accused, as he can maybe envision himself in a similar situation (His son punched him and left, never to meet again). So here his emotions played a big role and lead him to create a personal knowledge aspect that the boy is guilty, and his arguments seem perfectly fine in his mind, because of his bias. At the end of the film, he is the only one left, we see that he is left only with feeble arguments and has little support for his guilt, except that he knows the boy is guilty. This juror clearly showed how emotion play a role in influencing decisions with the track of personal knowledge. 

The next aspect I want to talk about was reason. This also plays a major role in influencing decisions. Every character in the film must have used reasoning to arrive at a particular conclusion. One particular argument that stood out as solid evidence was; The boy was heard saying the words “I will kill you”. He has also been found with a switch blade on him. This might be for personal defense reasons.. You never know. Then he was seen running down the stairwell of his house by an old man who also “saw” the boy murdering his father. So all this points to one obvious verdict. The boy must have committed the crime and we must charge him guilty. This is what we call shared knowledge in TOK. Now we don’t know how reliable a source really is. So we should not rely on unreliable sources. Juror 8 and Juror 9 try to prove that some of these arguments could be doubtful by using evidence and clear reasoning in the film. The film was great and I really enjoyed it