This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
Watching and rewatching trailer in the weeks leading up to seeing the film, it felt impossible for the actual thing to live up to the promise. Having finally seen it, I think it does.
Each to his own, but it is striking how differently people are interpreting various parts of a film. The notion that the library Toth designs for van Buren hides the books (or symbolic of Toth concealing his intellectualism) is so curious! The design imo, shows Toth…
Sebastian Stan’s performance is remarkable, his Trump isn't the always fully formed caricature of himself but someone still young, impressionable, and formable. Martin Donovan is unnerving as Fred Trump, another remarkable turn, along with Catherine McNally as Mary Anne Trump - couldn’t help thinking their joint performances were more impactful than Strong’s as Cohn, though the scenes where the power dynamic shifts between Trump and Cohn are very effectively done. A great set of actors in smaller roles esp those…
A film packed with understated character moments even for the smallest roles.
Absolute standout for me is the elderly couple, the Marlowes, nearly destroyed by the killing of their son, and the husband’s need to avenge it. Jean Innes as Alice Marlowe has only a few lines, but oh the line delivery & the gestures are so full of devastation.
Prefer to see it as a restaging a classic play than a remake of a film. 12 Angry Men ought to be remade every other decade like Little Women is.
Casting older actors like Jack Lemmon & George C Scott in the roles played by younger actors Henry Fonda & Lee J Cobb gives a different kind of a momentum to the story. That alone was worth the remake.
