If you consider the Russian literary tradition, with its penchant for turning existentialism into a five-course meal, it’s hard to think of many American films that would be a more appetizing choice for adaptation by Russian director Nikita Mikhalkov than “12 Angry Men,” the 1957 drama that locked a jury in a room for a day to debate the fate of an alleged killer.In “12,” which Mikhalkov says is loosely based on the original Sidney Lumet film, the hours inside a makeshift jury room in modern-day Moscow are not wasted, as far more than the murder in question is on the table. Race, class, justice, war, free will, greed, government decay and conspiracy are on the menu.
Where Lumet’s film is lean and taut, the small jury room and a hot day ratcheting up emotions, Mikhalkov has opened up and expanded his into a more than 2 1/2-hour saga.
The trial is set in winter, with the back story of a Chechen boy accused of murdering his Russian stepfather intercut throughout.
You are glad he escapes the confines of the jury room on occasion. In the open fields and small villages of Chechnya, you are reminded of Mikhalkov’s intimate feel for the landscape of his country and the joy and pain of its peoples.
He takes us through a bucolic summer countryside and into the war-torn Chechen streets, where guilt and innocence linger as heavy as smoke from the firebombs that have gutted the boy’s hometown.
The first vote is taken — 11 guilty, 1 innocent — and so begins an exhaustive analysis of the murder and, more tellingly, the men, a diverse social, political and ethnic bunch. Prejudice is laid bare as they slowly dissect one another as mercilessly as the case in front of them.
Three singular performances anchor the film: Sergei Makovetsky as the businessman who casts the first dissenting vote and is the first to expose his own redemption story; Sergei Gazarov as the Caucasus- born surgeon whose history proves unexpectedly explosive and compelling; and Sergey Garmash as the racist cabdriver who battles the others and the many indignities of his life until the end.
There is an unnerving twist at the end, but for the most part, “12” is magnetic. The men are just as angry as they were in Lumet’s day and the debate as passionately raucous as Russian literary tradition would demand.
“12”
PG-13 for violent images, disturbing content, thematic material, brief sexual and drug references, and smoking. 2 hours, 39 minutes. In Russian and Chechen with English subtitles. Written and directed by Nikita Mikhalkov; starring Sergei Makovetsky, Sergey Garmash, Aleksei Petrenko, Valentin Gaft, Yuriy Stoyanov and Sergei Gazarov. Opens today at the Mayan.
