12 Angry Men vs. 12 Gentle Japanese

Warning: SPOILERS. Don’t read this if you don’t want to know the endings.

Years ago I watched the 1957 classic film 12 Angry Men. Turns out, in 1991, Japanese director Shun Nakahara made a spoof of that film. Brian and I watched both movies recently, one after the other, to see how they compared. The original film is of course a drama. Based on a play of the same name, this movie, starring Henry Fonda, Jack Warden, Jack Klugman and Ed Begley, is set entirely in one room and is fraught with tension and suspense. The defendent is a young man accused of killing his father. The 12 jurors are sequestered in a small room where they have to decide a verdict on the seemingly open and shut case. All the jurors but one quickly state that they believe the accused is guilty. They are ready to leave the room, but there is one hold-out - Henry Fonda. It’s a hot summer day, the fan isn’t working, and the heat in the room seems to increase the tension, to mirror the jurors’ increasing claustrophobia. There is also a storm brewing outside. Finally it starts to rain, and slowly, methodically, the jurors are brought around to Fonda’s way of thinking – his arguments are sound. As time goes on, and more jurors switch sides, the tension eases. The storm abates, and Glugman’s character figures out that the fan does work, and things cool down literally and figuratively. The last juror to give in is J. Lee Cobb’s character, who, it turns out, is taking the trial of the young man personally, seeing in the man his own estranged “ungrateful” son. Finally, he faces his own anguish and realizes he is being unfair. The verdict is not guilty.

The 1991 Japanese version of the movie is more of a spoof than a serious attempt at a remake. This is fairly clear by the title, which is １２人の優しい日本人　(juu-ni nin no yasashii nihonjin – 12 Gentle Japanese). The film parallels the original in many ways – it is filmed mostly in one small, hot room (though somehow the jurors get to go outside for a breath of air!), and the jurors must come to a consensus . However, the atmosphere is rather light as the movie opens as 12 seemingly happy, chatty people quickly pile into the room, and the spokesperson begins taking orders for drinks –iced coffee, iced tea, banana juice, Yakult [a yogurt drink] and even a fruit parfait are all ordered amidst a party-like atmosphere. The defendant in this case is a young divorced mother accused of pushing her ex-husband in front of a truck. The jurors sit down, and quickly all but one state that the young woman is not guilty (muzai). They quickly rise, say how fun this get together was, and prepare to leave. However, there is one hold-out – a young, professional-looking man. He has reasonable arguments for the woman’s guilt, while, at first, the only arguments for her innocence are: she’s too cute to do something like that, I can see when someone is lying, it’s a feeling, etc…Eventually, though, after some flip-flopping, it is determined that the woman is, indeed, not guilty, and the hold-out, it turns out, was harboring a bit of a grudge against his own wife. Realizing this, he gives in and changes his verdict to not guilty.

So, the parallels are obvious, the ending's the same, but the process is oh so different. One of the greatest ironies is that Japan does not have a jury system (this may change in 2009 when 6-member juries are introduced), so one has to wonder how effective this movie was when it was released? But for us, at least, it was pretty funny and a very interesting “remake” of the original, with a very distinctive Japanese flavour.