the audience applauded

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Mobster Louie Boffano (Tony Lo Bianco) is on trial for murder. Annie Laird (Demi Moore) is an artist selected as a juror in the big trial. She and her son Oliver (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is soon being tracked by mob muscle Eddie (James Gandolfini). She's wine-and-dine by a rich art dealer but he turns out to be someone working for Boffano. He's known as "The Teacher" (Alec Baldwin). She is shocked at his veiled threats against Oliver and her friend Juliet (Anne Heche).This is a bunch of very broad characters in a wannabe thriller. Moore as the protective mother is functional. Baldwin is good when he's creepy but he loses something as a maniac. Gandolfini does some good acting that foreshadows better things to come for him. The story needs to be simplified. The first half is fine but the movie deteriorates. When the trial finishes, the movie needs a reason to go on, and on, and on. So the movie change the driving force from the trial to a psycho Teacher. The change lost me a little and I stopped caring.

Overall an engaging drama for those with interests in legal plots. But script has taken liberties with reality and the ease with which houses are bugged, reservation systems are hacked, explosives are planned, makes the genre more like a spy thriller but the attempt is not very successful at that. The plot could have had a better focus on the legal drama. Character of Teacher has been portrayed larger than life perhaps for cinematic effects but it has a trivializing effect on the story line. The Jury room conversations were interesting but wish there was more of it as the audience for the movie (as drawn in by the movie title) would likely have more expectations of that.

Excellent: Demi Moore, cinematography. The suspense-parts are generally well done, for example where it is not clear whether the boy on the bicycle will be killed or not. General plot: Unfortunately the genre where the good person does nothing right and the bad person does nothing wrong. And innocent friends also get killed in the process. Then suddenly in the last 5 minutes the good person amasses incredible logistics and action, and the bad guy dies. Better would have been some more intellectual input throughout the film from the heroin, such as that she gradually finds out where he hid microphones, and realises that he has her address list, and so warns her friends what is going on.

"The Juror" features Alec Baldwin in yet another edgy criminal role not unlike his character in "Miami Blues", which happens to be terrific, while "The Juror" is close to terrible. Everything about the trial is very vague, stretched, and uninteresting. The characters are mostly unlikable, including Demi Moore. So what you get is a highly unlikely story of a meek artist juror submitting to Baldwin's threats for almost the entire film, and then suddenly transforming into "Mrs Rambo" for the unbelievably weak finale. Throw in a ridiculous "how did he do that?" relating to the demise of Tony LoBianco, some questionable motivation, and a general feeling of "no way could that happen". - MERK