12 Citizens
十二公民
China, 2014, colour, 2.35:1, 106 mins.
Director: Xu Ang 徐昂.
Rating: 9/10.
Engrossing adaptation of the classic US legal drama Twelve Angry Men is superbly written and played.
STORY
Beijing, the present day, summer. As part of their exam process, students at a politics and law university hold a mock trial based on a current controversial case in which the 20-year-old adopted son (Adam Xu) of a wealthy entrepreneur from Henan province has been accused of killing his birth father, also from Henan. The mock trial, supervised by the university’s law professor (Long Lin), is held along western lines, with a jury, to test the students’ abilities. The jurors are mostly volunteers from the students’ own families. They’re told they should spend at least an hour debating the evidence and their decision must be unanimous. They retire to an old warehouse on the university campus where a table has been set up; each juror is identified by just a number, with the university’s assistant law professor (Lei Jia) taking the role of no. 1, the jury foreman. They hold an initial vote: only one, no. 8 (He Bing), votes “not guilty”. No. 1 proposes that each juror in turn should try to persuade him to vote “guilty”. No. 2, a mathematics professor (Wang Gang), has little to say. No. 3, a taxi driver (Han Tongsheng), quotes the evidence of an old man in the flat below who heard the accused quarrel with his father, followed by the sound of a fight, and then saw the accused running downstairs. No. 4, a wealthy real estate businessman (Zhao Chunyang), casts doubt on the accused’s alibi of being at a party. No. 5, a onetime gangster (Gao Dongping), has nothing to say. No. 6, a doctor in an A&E unit (Li Guangfu), says there’s no reason to doubt the old man’s testimony. No. 7 (Qian Bo), who runs a noodle stall on the campus, and who’s been reluctantly dragged into the mock trial, says the accused is just a spoiled rich kid. Discussion breaks down with the jurors arguing between themselves, with no. 10 (Zhang Yongqiang), an exploitative Beijing landlord who’s made disparaging remarks about nouveaux riches peasants from Henan, causing special trouble. Exasperated, No. 1 tries to restore order. No. 8 says that, even though it’s only a mock trial, everyone should take their role seriously. He first points to the weak performance of the student defence lawyer, who privately believed her client was guilty. His remark upsets No. 4, who says the student, whom he’s sponsoring, is actually his fiancee. As the jurors discuss the supposedly specialised weapon used to kill the father, No. 8 produces an identical flick-knife he bought cheaply online. To break the voting deadlock, he suggests a secret ballot in which he himself will not take part: if there are still no “not guilty” votes, he’ll join the general consensus. However, one juror votes “not guilty” and reveals himself as No. 9 (Mi Tiezeng). Criticised as a rightist during the ’50s, he says he’ll never forget the silent re-assurance he received from a young woman, and for that reason believes everyone deserves a supporter. As No. 8 continues to question the various testimonies at the mock trial, more and more jurors start to change their votes, with No. 10 and No. 3 proving the most obdurate.
REVIEW
Mainland playwright and occasional actor Xu Ang 徐昂, 37 – who played the weird artist neighbour in horror Bunshinsaba 3 笔仙3 – makes a powerful film-making debut with 12 Citizens 十二公民, a Beijing-set adaptation of US writer Reginald Rose’s classic live teleplay, Twelve Angry Men (1954), directed by Franklin J. Schaffner. About a lone juror who turns his 11 colleagues round to a “not guilty” judgement in a murder case, it was subsequently adapted into a stage play but is best known in its 1957 Hollywood movie version, 12 Angry Men, directed by Sidney Lumet. The classic post-war examination of reason vs prejudice, legality vs rush-to-judgement, proves eminently adaptable to China’s fast-evolving society, especially with an intelligent script that hews closely to Rose’s plot but transfers it seamlessly to a contemporary Asian setting. China has traditionally been short on big-screen legal/courtroom dramas compared with, say, South Korea, but 12 Citizens stands proud next to another recent example, Silent Witness 全民目击 (2013).
Such is the universality of the source material that it’s already spawned several other adaptations, including a powerful Russian version, 12 (Nikita Mikalkhov, 2007), the Hindi Ek ruka hua faisla, aka A Pending Decision (Basu Chatterjee, 1986), and a 1991 Japanese re-working, The Gentle Twelve 12人の优しい日本人 (Nakahara Shun 中原俊, 1991), scripted by playwright/film-maker Mitani Koki 三谷幸喜. Xu’s version gets round the problem of China not having a jury system by staging it as a mock trial held at a university by students stuying western law; the jury is largely composed of the student’s parents. (The same “mock trial” idea was also used in a recent two-part Japanese movie, Solomon’s Perjury ソロモンの伪证 , set in a high school.)
Where the Hollywood film had an all-star cast, Xu’s uses a team of middle-aged character actors better known for their stage work (at Beijing People’s Art Theatre 北京人民艺术剧院 and National Theatre Company of China 中国国家话剧院) than for their box-office drawing power, and he’s also resisted the temptation to make the movie more commercial by introducing younger actors or female roles. The result is a quality drama, pitched somewhere between mainstream and arthouse, in which dialogue and performances rule, supported by invisibly smooth editing and subtly shaded cinematography that blend the material into a gripping dramatic experience, even for audiences familiar with the original.
Rose’s original teleplay took a stereotypical cross-section of ’50s American society. Xu and his fellow writers – legal expert Li Yujiao 李玉娇 and scripter Han Jinglong 韩景龙, aka Xiao Han 小汗 (Bunshinsaba II 笔仙II, 2013) – do the same with China for a commentary on attitudes and prejudices in the present-day Mainland (or more specifically, Beijing). Subjects include the widening division between rich and poor, metropolitan snobbery towards rural nouveaux riches, the arrogance of the fu erdai (spoiled kids of wealthy entrepreneurs) and, still the hottest subject in China, the rule of law on an everyday basis rather than just having a fair legal system. No more or no less didactic than Rose’s original, the film manages to create real characters who engage an audience’s emotions rather than being just a collection of representative cut-outs – and for that Xu can take as much credit as his excellent, seasoned cast.
As the sole juror (“No. 8”) who hews to his beliefs despite often emotional opposition, He Bing 何冰 subtly shades a potentially goodie-goodie role, as a man who acknowledges the impossibility of ever knowing the truth but insists the evidence is hardly conclusive when looked at with an objective eye. In suppressed emotion, he’s particularly well matched by Zhao Chunyang 赵春羊 as a wealthy real estate businessman who’s “sponsoring” a hot female student at the university, and by Gao Dongping 高冬平 as a reformed gangster who holds back his feelings until a crucial stage. Balancing those quieter performances, Han Tongsheng 韩童生 dominates much of the going as “No. 3”, who holds out the longest for a “guilty” vote; utterly believable as a hot-tempered Beijing taxi-driver, Han also turns a potential cut-out into a genuinely moving character, especially in his final, impassioned speech. Equally extrovert are Qian Bo 钱波 as a stall owner and Zhang Yongqiang 张永强 as an exploitative landlord; both add some lightness and humour that’s missing from Rose’s original, though their turn-arounds are not as movingly depicted.
Music is sparingly used. Instead, the real drama is stoked by the subtly textured widescreen photography of Cai Tao 蔡涛 (camera operator on Beijing Flickers 有种, 2012) that gives a drab warehouse on a hot, stormy summer’s afternoon a slightly theatrical presence, and by the smooth, mobile editing that cuts a large number of individual set-ups into a seamless whole playing out in almost real time. Like several of the other adaptations, the script adds a small twist to one character at the end that has caused some discussion in China but actually makes perfect sense given the movie’s theme.
CREDITS
Presented by Beijing Juben Production (CN), Glory Media (CN), MoMovie (Shanghai) (CN).
Script: Li Yujiao, Han Jinglong, Xu Ang. Original teleplay: Reginald Rose. Photography: Cai Tao. Editing: Wang Gang, Yin Jiale. Editing direction: Marie-Perre Duhamel. Music: Mars Radio. Art direction: Zhang Yu. Costume design: Luan Liming. Sound: Xia Jiankui, Tu Yi’nan. Executive direction: Chen Wei.
Cast: He Bing (Lu Gang, juror no. 8), Lei Jia (juror no. 1, the jury foreman/law school’s assistant professor), Wang Gang (juror no. 2, the mathematics professor), Han Tongsheng (juror no. 3, the taxi driver), Zhao Chunyang (juror no. 4, the real estate businessman), Gao Dongping (juror no. 5, the former gangster), Li Guangfu (juror no. 6, the A&E doctor), Qian Bo (juror no. 7, the noodle stall owner), Mi Tiezeng (juror no. 9, the retired man), Zhang Yongqiang (juror no. 10, the landlord), Ban Zan (juror no. 11, the law school’s security officer), Liu Hui (juror no. 12, the insurance salesman), Adam Xu (rich kid), Long Lin (Li, the teacher).
Premiere: Rome Film Festival (Cinema Today), 19 Oct 2014.
Release: China, 15 May 2015.
(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 13 Jun 2015.)