Just like 12 Angry Men, this movie relies on emotion rather than facts to keep a man from being convicted of murder. Are there any good jury movies where the facts and not the personal lives of the jurors decide the fate of the accused?
Did anyone connect this to the real life case in Alaska where a man pushed his wife off a cliff? He also said she had fallen, that he had not pushed her. He also had a reason to kill his wife. I wonder if he saw this movie first.
i don't know if he was guilty or not, but i do agree that this film completely relies on emotions rather than facts.
it seemed like the only argument against the man is that he was cheating on his wife, and we don't really hear any other concrete evidence against his side of the story. the sympathy i'm supposed to feel for him is completely unbelievable - all he wants to do is marry his mistress and dump his frumpy wife, otherwise he's a wonderful, caring man! it felt so contrived, so un-genuine. and the "twist" about the isobel bradford character was intellectually offensive. yes, she only voted guilty because her husband left her and she's an old bitter hag. there's no other reason to find him guilty. i felt this film could have gone much deeper (it's only 88 minutes), but it fails miserably.
have you ever watched nicholas ray's Knock on Any Door?
Yeah - the "emotions" save innocent men in both movies.
there's no proof of innocence, just questionable testimony and witnesses. this film relies on circumstances that could have happened instead of any concrete evidence.
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The assumption is clearly that both men (12 Angry, Perfect Strangers) are
NOT guilty and that it's hard "emotions" that drive the jurors who would
have convicted these two otherwise to deeply examine the case. These
are MOVIES. Obviously, we, the viewers, haven't been anywhere near as
close to the situation as the jurors. So the writers manipulate us into
believing that after the jurors have worked hard to examine the case
further, they have done the right thing in coming up with a not guilty
verdict.
"Strangers" was a fairly lousy movie. I tuned in because I love Rogers
and had never seen this forgettable film. "Angry Men" is a whole
different story. It's a classic. Remember, Cobb's "emotions" are
convicting an innocent man; Fonda's emotions are forcing Cobb to admit
his personal issues are doing so. The emotions stem from a need to GET
TO the facts. The FACTS are that the young man is INNOCENT. Get it now?
fonda's character never claims to know that the boy on trial is innocent. he says that there is a possibility that he may not be guilty and if you are going to sentence someone to death, one has to be 100% sure. he even says he has his doubts and that he may be helping the release of a guilty man, but he isn't sure. at least i understood why they came to that conclusion, which i appreciated as a viewer. yes, i did get 12 Angry Men.
that's one of my major problems with Perfect Strangers, no one on the not guilty section was willing to admit that they are wrong or the possibility that the man on trial did murder his wife to marry his mistress. it seemed like they were so eager to say that it is "true love" because the rogers/morgan characters have found themselves in a similar situation and there's no way either one of them could be a killer. and to make a villain out of the old lady that was cheated on decades ago and was on the opposite side was so predictable. that's what i found intellectually offensive. i'm a huge ginger rogers fan myself and was disappointed she would appear in such trash and that anyone would hand her such a poor quality of a script. well, at least we could agree on that.
I don't think it made sense that the majority of the jurors thought he was innocent on the first vote. man wants to dump wife to marry girlfriend. She standing near the edge of a cliff begging him not to leave. she ends up going over cliff and 8 people think not guilty on the first vote??
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula & Superman away.