12 Angry Men...but 75 minutes longer

Welcome to my first actual review of "seconds week." I apologize for never finishing my review for David Lynch's Wild at Heart (1990), but I honestly became so irritated with the style of film making, I just moved on to better things (sleeping, eating entire large pizza's, watching Dirty Dancing...twice). The hilarious part is that of his films, this one has one of the clearest, least confusing narratives, but nonetheless, I got lazy. That said, here we are; My final choices for week 2 are as follows:
1. For a Few Dollars More (1965)
2. Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
3. Heaven's Gate (1980)
4. 12 (2007)
5. The Two Jakes (1990) *this one is both a sequel and has #2 in the title.

I've just come from watching 12 (2007), Nikita Mikhalkov's recent remake of the American classic film, 12 Angry Men (1957). The original film, directed by revered American director Sydney Lumet is often considered to be one of the greatest American films ever made. Set in post world war 2 America, the original confronted issues of racial prejudices, and asked questions of basic morality. At the time, the movie made quite an impact, and as such has been the subject of several American remakes over the last 50 years.

Tonight's film even had been nominated for an oscar for "best foreign language film." The Russian director is widely considered to be the Russian Spielberg, being responsible for several oscar winning films previously. Unfortunately though, this remake isn't the instant classic that I was expecting; Chocked full of poignant moments and memorable monologues it was, but it was also unbearably long. The original film leaves you feeling satisfied at 96 minutes with an unoffensive and ambiguous ending. Being that the premise for both films is the 12 men sitting around a table arguing over whether or not an uneducated boy is guilty or not guilty of murder, 96 minutes is more than a fair amount of time to tell this tale. Not for Mikhalkov though. For him, every single character had to have their own built up monologue, painting a tragically metaphoric picture related to the accused boy. In almost every case though, you're left feeling that these simple people are trying too hard to outdo one another with thick, dangerously contrived melodrama. That aside, out of the 159 minutes in this film, about 100 of them were spectacular. Certain moments were perfectly resonant, and certain actors drew us in all too well. It's just unfortunate that this film didn't become terrible for one long stretch, and that the bland moments had to pollute the entire script. If you're interested in seeing this film, be sure to watch the original first, as most of it's most wonderful developments are taken directly from the source. Overall, I give this film a B -, or a 71%.

Next up, Heaven's Gate (1980), the biggest commercial flop in the history of movies. See you then.
-Ben