12 Angry Men (1997) Provides Compelling Evidence for Cinematic Remakes

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Remakes are a tricky thing. On the one hand, the 21st century is littered with remakes that no one asked for and very few enjoyed. For example, since Spooky Season is now upon us, we’re well into the second wave of the Stephen King catalog, and the results have been…not great.*

On the other hand, there are plenty of modern masterpieces that also happen to be repeat attempts at adapting the same material. It’s easy to point to films like The Fly, The Thing, True Grit, and Ocean’s Eleven as examples of legendary directors vastly improving upon a story that’s already been done, but there are more than you might think.

One that I’ve avoided all my life, by design, is William Friedkin’s 1997 remake of 12 Angry Men. I saw Sidney Lumet’s 1957 film at a young age, and it left quite an impression.** I even saw the stage play in 2007 that starred Richard Thomas as the lone holdout and featured George Wendt in a supporting role.*** It’s a script that I’ve adored ever since my first experience with it.

I simply couldn’t convince myself to watch a more contemporary version—especially one that was made for TV (Showtime, but still) and padded by 21 extra minutes. I assumed it was little more than a curiosity or a cash grab for Friedkin. After finally giving it a chance (and really going for it), I found myself digging deeper into the nature and purpose of cinematic remakes altogether.

It’s necessary to point out that 12 Angry Men is actually an outlier when you consider its authorship. Sure, two all-time great directors were behind the camera for both film versions, but the strength in either case is Reginald Rose’s brilliant screenplay. The thing about that is…the script Lumet directed was actually Rose’s second version of the story. A 51-minute teleplay boasting the slightly different title of Twelve Angry Men preceded the Lumet film by just three years.**** And it was the teleplay’s success—Rose, director Franklin Schaffner, and lead actor Robert Cummings all won Emmys that year—that sparked the idea for Lumet’s film.

…Which means that the version of 12 Angry Men that I’ve loved for more than half of my life is itself a remake. In my prolonged avoidance of the 1997 version, I’d somehow overlooked this glaring irony.

Perhaps the fact that Rose was willing to modernize his own screenplay four decades later is enough reason for the remake to exist.***** To his credit, he does a fine job of modernizing the story. The extra minutes, most of which are spent on character development, don’t feel superfluous. The pop culture references to things like Rocky, Mike Tyson, and Fat Albert don’t feel forced. And more importantly, the jurors themselves accurately reflect the time period. Four of the jurors are Black and two others are European, which complicates the commentaries on racism and classism in interesting and even unexpected ways.

But what if the film hadn’t been scripted by its original creator? Reginald Rose died five years after this film was released; does that mean this story is off limits forevermore? Should it be off limits?

If another edition of 12 Angry Men was to be announced and slated for 2027, I’ll admit that my initial reaction would be one of frustration. My fear that they (whoever “they” might be) will massacre my boy would almost certainly outweigh my hope that the remake would work, even if it was in the hands of one of my favorite modern directors.

That’s where the nature of storytelling comes into play. When we talk about the truly great stories—and I believe Rose’s tale has earned that recognition—aren’t they meant to be passed down and retold? The 1957 film is still relevant today (and I fear it may always be), but it’s not exactly contemporary. Neither is the 1997 film now that nearly three decades have passed. It stands to reason that a brand new version of the story—one that includes women, queer people, people of other nationalities, disabled persons, etc.—is justifiable. It may not be as successful as the versions before it, but it could be worthy of the attempt.

As in most cases, I think a nuanced approach to the rationality of cinematic remakes is warranted. Many of them—perhaps most of them—aren’t “necessary,” and you could even argue, as I might on a bad day, that their existence stands as evidence that the film industry has run out of ideas. But maybe some of them are necessary to uphold our narrative traditions. And hell, sometimes the unnecessary ones are pretty entertaining too.

I, for one, will be seated for the upcoming third edition of Nosferatu. (I just have to convince my family to go see it on Christmas Day.)

*We won’t be discussing Pet Sematary (2019) today. But the third cinematic rendition of Salem’s Lot (and the first to be released as a film rather than a miniseries) will be streaming on Max in just six days whether you like it or not.

**12 Angry Men was also one of the first films I wrote about for this newsletter. I did a deep dive to determine which Yankees game the impatient juror had tickets to that night. It’s still one of my favorite things I’ve written for this medium, and it’s actually gotten some of my highest traffic.

***Many years later, I saw Thomas play Atticus Finch on the same stage. That man loves a legal drama.

****I watched this version recently just to complete the saga (it’s a bonus feature on Criterion’s 12 Angry Men disc). The meat of the story is still there, so it’s pretty good, but it was staged and broadcast as a live production, so there are some hiccups. In fact, you can see a camera in one shot.

*****I say this as someone who loves Michael Haneke’s 1997 film Funny Games but still refuses to watch Michael Haneke’s 2007 film Funny Games. I contain multitudes.

12 Angry Men is now streaming on Kanopy, Tubi, the Criterion Collection, and MGM+, and it is available to rent elsewhere.