12 Citizens

A university arranges a resit for students who failed their law exam: they will act out a real case. Their parents take the jury seats. The case is the accusation that a young man adopted by a wealthy family murdered his birth father, and the newspapers have been running it for months. Twelve people start voting in a closed room. Eleven of them have made up their minds; one is not sure, and reopens the argument. Xu Ang's film is Twelve Angry Men transposed to China. What gets argued about in that crowded room is less the case than what these people assume about each other: their views of the provincial, the rich man, the old man and the security guard all come out in turn.