12 Angry Men

"12 Angry Men" began life as a landmark of live television. Reginald Rose's original teleplay won an Emmy Award in 1955. Henry Fonda brought the story to the big screen and brought Rose along with it to adapt and expand the script. Producer Fonda takes the lead as a holdout juror who tries to stop a rush to judgment in a murder trial and to debate the facts at hand before sentencing a young man to death. Lee J. Cobb leads the "guilty" camp and becomes belligerent as others change their votes during the debate. Martin Balsam, John Fiedler, E.G. Marshall, Jack Klugman, Jack Warden, Ed Begley and Robert Webber co-star as fellow jurors. The film marked the feature debut of Sidney Lumet, himself a veteran of live TV, and he effectively modulates the drama without ever taking the camera out of the jury room until the verdict is in and the jury is out. This new edition features commentary by film historian Drew Casper, the new retrospective featurette "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt: The Making of 12 Angry Men" (featuring director Lumet and surviving cast member Klugman) and "Inside the Jury Room," where legal experts discuss the film's facts and fictions.