MovieChat Forums > 12 Angry Men (1997) Discussion > Shoddy adaptation from brilliant source ...

Shoddy adaptation from brilliant source material


This film has the distinction of being the first film I watched in its entirety on YOUTUBE.

I think its pretty poorly shot and acted - only the late James Gandolfini giving any real depth to his character.

Lemmon and Scott are much too old to play their characters.

Rose's teleplay was revolutionary at the time and I still think that it can form the basis for another modern adaptation.

Just do not let Bill Friedkin anywhere near it.



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Um, you are aware that Rose adapted this himself? He updated it to the 90s.

As for your other comments, yeah, I agree, Lemmon and Scott were too old for their characters - they weren't too much younger than "the old man". Gandolfini did well. But I actually thought Danza did a good job. I didn't like Armin Mueller Stahl, though - one, there shouldn't have been a foreigner in that role (not that I care about foreigners, but they had one for Edward James Olmos' role), and two, he wasn't as unemotional as E.G. Marshall was in the original.




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Um, you are aware that Rose adapted this himself? He updated it to the 90s.


This is why attempts to update classic films and plays to be "modern" and "socially relevant" usually fail: they focus on superficial things (like making sure that the jury isn't all-white, which is overcompensated for by having what is practically a majority black jury) while missing the big picture.

As for your other comments, yeah, I agree, Lemmon and Scott were too old for their characters - they weren't too much younger than "the old man". Gandolfini did well. But I actually thought Danza did a good job. I didn't like Armin Mueller Stahl, though - one, there shouldn't have been a foreigner in that role (not that I care about foreigners, but they had one for Edward James Olmos' role), and two, he wasn't as unemotional as E.G. Marshall was in the original.


Other than his age, Scott was a good choice as a stand-in for Lee J. Cobb, and he gave a good performance apart from his over-the-top tantrum and breakdown towards the end. Having an older character in Cobb's role didn't bother me as much as casting an elderly Jack Lemmon in Fonda's.

I thought that Danza was OK as Mr. Baseball, though the original portrayal by Jack Warden was better - we got the sense that he was a shallow character with Warden, as opposed to a stupid one with Danza.

Armin Mueller Stahl was fine, his foreign accent didn't bother me, and his only emotional outburst was telling Williamson's character (the Nation of Islam juror) to shut up his rant about Mexicans.

The rest of the cast either didn't have much to say/do or were (in Mykelti Williamson's case) consistently over the top.

It was basically a mediocre effort, not worthy of the original source material nor of Friedkin's reputation as a once great director.

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