Lawyers, Guns and Money: An occasional series on movies, TV and other stories about lawyers and the law — 12 Angry Men (1957, Dir. Sidney Lumet)

One is an unrepentant racist. Another is filled with rage for his grown son. There’s the guy who has Yankees tickets burning a hole in his pocket. There’s an ad man, a stockbroker, a proud immigrant and a blue collar working man. And there’s the stoic architect — the one who actually wants to hear everyone out, who takes his responsibility as a juror with the seriousness appropriate when a defendant’s life is at stake.

Sixty-seven years after its release, 12 Angry Men remains an explosive drama of small-scale democracy, bottled up in a jury room where individual prejudices and passions gradually coalesce into a collective voice. Confined almost entirely to a single, claustrophobic set, Sidney Lumet’s remarkable feature film debut is a nearly perfect movie, with an airtight screenplay by Reginald Rose (adapting his own play) and a dozen top-flight performances providing an early indication of the magic Lumet would work with actors over the next 50 years. A Lumet cast is like a single organism, moving and thinking together toward a common purpose.