A loose remake of 12 Angry Men, set in a Russian school. 12 jurors are struggling to decide the fate of a Chechen teenager who allegedly killed his Russian stepfather who took the teenager to live with him in Moscow during the Chechen War in which teenager lost his parents. The jurors: a racist taxi-driver, a suspicious doctor, a vacillating TV producer, a Holocaust survivor, a flamboyant musician, a cemetery manager, and others represent the fragmented society of modern day Russia.
The story is not new, it has the same setup of “12 Angry Men”. However, Russian cinema master Nikita Mikhalkov, who wrote and directed this masterpiece, and also acts in it along some of the best Russian actors, did a great job at adapting the story to the Russian life and reality. Five popcorns.
