Clean-cut white family man Nick “Steve” Hoult pulls jury duty (in Savannah GA, so not quite a rural juror). He hears the story of Problematic James (Super 8 kid Gabe Basso) murdering his girlfriend (the director’s own daughter), and suddenly Hoult realizes that maybe he hit the girl with his own car when he was out not-drinking after an emotional day. Out of guilt he tries to 12-angry-men the jury into acquitting, then after consulting his lawyer friend Kiefer, he tells his pregnant wife that he will Protect Our Family and tries to 12-angry-men the jury into convicting.
Stressed-out Hoult:
DA Toni Collette is running for office and wants this to be an open-and-shut case, but ex-cop juror J.K. “J/K” Simmons thinks she hasn’t investigated well enough and starts sniffing around until he’s kicked off the jury and replaced with an alternate. The throughline is professionals getting into lazy ruts and missing details that don’t fit the easiest story. Toni’s redemption arc is to be dissatisfied with victory and putting in the extra work to track down Hoult. Not a showy film, letting the script and actors carry the drama, though crosscutting between the defense and prosecution during the opening arguments was cool. The defense lawyer was in the Devilevator, other jurors whose names I caught include a boys club guy from Bojack, the purple lady from Logan Lucky, Leslie Bibb of Midnight Meat Train, and a stoned kid from the recent Halloween remakes.