Then someone says he's from Eastern Europe and he doesn't correct him either.
His accent did seem to have certain russian twangs to it in places and somewhat slavic in others, so he could have been playing an Eastern European. But I also picked up a bit of Spanish and even Italian twang so maybe the actor deliberately chose a muddled accent that wasn't authentic so that his nationaility wasn't apparent.
As for not correcting anyone, maybe he just doesn't care to discuss it one way or the other. Many people are like that over a number of issues. I have a very muddled accent after having grown up bilingual and in 3 different countries with very distinctly different accents and vernaculars and I avoid answering where I'm from when people ask me if I think they 'll start some long winded diatribe about it. Maybe Olmos' character just couldn't be bothered to have his ethnicity and background be the topic of discussion among complete strangers, especially in a tense setting with people desperately wanting to get out of what they were doing.
EDIT: I just rewatched the scene, and Tony Danza actually calls him "middle eastern... european" whilst pissed off and just prior to that, Olmos' aske the other juror to not defend him and just sat there without reacting when he Danza was saying that stuff about 'coming over to this country and start running the show'.
And if it's supposed to be a mistake how do you explain his ridiculous German sounding accent through the whole movie?
That accent was absolutely nothing even close to German. Juror no4 was played by a German actor and it is pretty obvious those accents couldn't be any further apart.
Furthermore, Germany is not in Eastern Europe, it just borders many countries that are, but the languages and accents are not similar at all. Most Eastern European countries have slavic-based languages, which sound totally different to German. So the character sounding German-ish and being from Eastern Europe don't add up, but that's not something the movie ever suggested and I like I wrote above, he had a sort of russian twang going. He could even have been trying to go for something like Bulgarian accent.
Or his passive reaction when the other juror goes on a racist rant against Latinos?
How does this prove he's not Latino? There's plenty of people who don't react to their race, religion and/or culture being racistly attacked. It doesn't mean they 're implicitly agreeing with it, they might just know it's not worth arguying with a racist or have simply grown used to it over the years and learned not to react and ignore it.
Besides which, he left the room and went into the bathroom looking clearly upset, so he did react, both physically and emotionally.
Also, Gandolfini's characters reacted to the rant, so does that mean his character is Latino?
Lastly, watch his reaction during the very first time that juror starts saying about 'them'. You can clearly see he's looking at him rather weirdly and feels uncomfortable.
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