This movie is one of my favorites. I teach Critical Thinking to undergraduate students and always use this movie to illustrate some of the principles covered in this movie. If you have not seen it, I highly recommend this version. It was re-done later but the 1957 version is, in my opinion, the best.

The movie takes place in one room - a jury deliberation room. The characters, 12 white, mostly middle-class and middle-aged men are not at all comfortable in their roles as jurors selected to decide the fate of the defendant: a frightened teenager accused of murder. The case is, on the surface, open-and-shut. Most of the jurors agree in the beginning of their deliberations that the boy is guilty. The evidence all points directly to him. Or does it?

This is where the movie gets interesting. The jurors are all anxious to get out of there and get on with their lives and really do not appear to be thinking seriously about the case. They just want to vote and get it over with. They don't care about the defendant and assume he is guilty just because he lives in the neighborhood, is one of 'those' people (a minority) and after all, everybody knows that 'those' people are always killing each other. This is one of the examples I use in the critical thinking class when we talk about assumptions, prejudice, and stereotyping.

Of course, there is a dissenter when the first vote is taken, and since it is a murder trial the vote must be unanimous for conviction. The dissenter is played by Henry Fonda, who portrays a thoughtful truth and justice seeker. Other jurors initially resent his reluctance to convict on the first glance and they become angry when they realize that they will not be going home soon.

As the movie progresses, more and more of the jurors are persuaded by the Fonda character's calm logical reasoning. They go through several votes, each one bringing them closer to an acquital decision, but it takes much discussion and a lot of shouting, blaming, and frustration on the part of the jurors.

This is an excellent movie for a critical thinking class because of the very obvious and not so obvious fallacies committed as the discussion continues. There are flaws in thinking, illogical sequences of thought, stereotyping, obfuscation, and other typical critical thinking errors displayed in the movie as the characters move through the stages of critical thinking development. It is also very interesting to watch as the men interact with each other in somewhat expected ways.