Clint Eastwood is 94 years old, and has been directing films for more than 50 years. Some of them are better than others and his track record of late has been questionable, but for a filmmaker of his age and his incredible legacy, I’m tempted to give him the benefit of the doubt regardless. His new film, Juror #2, a film that may very well be his swan song, has been all but buried by Warner Bros. Pictures, the studio he has worked with for many years. What’s different now? David Zaslav is in charge of things, and he wanted Juror #2 to stream exclusively on Max, rather than have any kind of theatrical rollout. After receiving more positive early buzz than apparently anyone in charge at Warner Bros. was expecting, Juror #2 is playing in a very limited theatrical release before being dumped onto Max a few days before Christmas. How is the film and should you be making any kind of effort to see it in a theater this holiday season?

Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult) is a journalist and a recovering alcoholic married to schoolteacher Ally (Zoey Deutch) who is about to give birth to their first child any day now. When he is called upon for jury duty in a high-profile murder case, he is hoping his circumstances will decrease his chances of being picked to serve on the jury. No such luck, he is picked, and Faith (Toni Collette), who is running for district attorney, seems hyper focused on a guilty verdict, because this would help her in some way with the upcoming election. But as Justin continues to absorb the information of this case, the more he begins to realize he may know more about what happened that night than he is letting on.

Juror #2 is a solid enough courtroom drama. It’s pretty entertaining, it does a serviceable job of getting you involved in its story pretty early into the runtime. It’s clear Clint Eastwood can still make a decent mid-budget drama for adults, a rarity in American cinema these days. And it’s the kind of thing that probably would have cleaned up at the box office in early fall, and is instead being handled by inept studio executives who seemingly don’t even like movies at all. That’s a shame, because despite my lack of enthusiasm about the films Eastwood has been putting out into the world over the past decade or so, a filmmaker of his stature surely deserves more respect than this. 

However, there are some considerable problems with Juror #2. The plot doesn’t really hold up the more you think about it, and it’s kind of got that straight-white-man-good-everyone-else-bad thing that has become such an ongoing theme in the films Eastwood has been making recently. The lead character is so consumed by this guilt for something he may or may not have had anything to do with, and we the audience are expected to believe he would slowly drop hints that connected him to this crime, rather than look the other way at every moment. The moral quandaries this character is dealing with and the implications of that are potentially interesting. But the way the story unfolds is less so.

We’ve got a great cast here. Nicholas Hoult is clearly showing how capable he is of leading a feature film. He’s working hard to wring out any kind of depth he can find in this terribly underwritten character. We have Toni Collette, Chris Messina, Zoey Deutch, JK Simmons, Amy Aquino, Gabriel Basso, Kiefer Sutherland, Leslie Bibb, Cedric Yarborough, Adrienne C. Moore, and Eastwood’s daughter Francesca Eastwood in various roles. And it seems like all of these people really wanted to work with Eastwood, and it’s enjoyable to see a cast full of faces you recognize, even if nobody is given anything particularly worthwhile to do. 

The script by first-time screenwriter Jonathan Abrams moves everything along nicely, and it’s never boring. But also the conclusion we come to is remarkably unsatisfying. Spoiler alert – if you consider this vague information a spoiler – we have ambiguity in our ending here. There are two kinds of ambiguity in storytelling, the kind that leaves you excited to discuss what happens with friends after, and the kind that leaves you with the impression that the screenwriter did not know how to end the story and is telling the viewer ‘here, you do it.’ And unfortunately the ending in Juror #2 has the second kind of ambiguity. The characters here are also kind of sloppily written and they’re more representative of concepts or story points than they feel like fully realized people. 

Overall, I didn’t really like Juror #2, and I don’t really predict it being an awards contender with any kind of genuine traction. But I do think those interested in what could very well be the final Clint Eastwood film, should have been able to see it in a theater. Do I think it deserves the theatrical experience? Not particularly. It was fine enough watching it on a screener link on my couch, and I don’t feel like there is anything happening cinematically here that demands the big screen. And I’m in the minority on this, maybe when you press play on Juror #2 when it streams on Max in a few weeks, you’ll be engaged and wrapped up in the characters and the ideas being presented here. But as a whole, I found it to be a bit of a drag, especially when there are so many films that have done this kind of thing better. Is it the worst note possible Eastwood could go out on? No, especially when you remember films like The 15:17 to Paris and Cry Macho. But it would have been nice for his final film to be stronger than this.