Gentle 12 (1991)
Directed by Shun Nakahara
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Synopsis by Clarke Fountain
In 1957, the highly lauded award-winning movie every highbrow major media outlet was talking about was called Twelve Angry Men. Based on a 1954 television drama, it told the story of how one lone hold-out on the jury in a murder trial was able to sway the others through the power of his character so that they brought in a verdict of "innocent" for a man who otherwise would have died. A box-office failure when it opened, it soon came to be regarded as a classic and easily recouped its production costs many times over. "Reasonable doubt" was the lever that moved that mountain. In this Japanese spoof of that film, eleven jurors are prepared to hand in a verdict of "innocent," and one thoughtful juror is not prepared to go along with the rest.