Judgments need critical thinking, which is reflected vividly in Twelve Angry Men. In the 1957 American film Twelve Angry Men, an 18-year-old boy who was suspected of killing his father will be judged by the jury of the case made up of twelve persons of different professions. In the jury room they were to reach an unanimous decision that whether the boy was guilty or not. The whole movie lasts 96 minutes, and more than 90 minutes, there is only one scene, which is the room where the jury is discussing, and the main process is 12 men having conversations.
I believe many people like to watch Sherlock Holmes and detective conan series. So of these two series and Twelve Angry Men, what are the similarities and differences? It seems that the similarity between them is very obvious, is to use reasoning to determine whether the suspect is the real killer; But the difference between them is also very obvious. The detective series must use scenarios and the parties concerned to carry out investigation and reasoning, more emphasis on events, while Twelve Angry Men basically is to show the 12 members of the jury in expressing their claim. The difference in thinking reflected in these different characters is more stimulating to our experience.
For example, No. 8 on the jury was the only one who thought the boy innocent on the first vote. No. 3 asked him “Do you really think he is innocent?” He said, “I don’t know. I just want to know more about him.” Number 8 neither explicitly believes that the witness is not problematic, nor does he explicitly believe what the teenager says. He is not on either side of the argument, and his claim is the need for them is not to rush to conclusions based on “feelings”, but to discuss them. The thinking behind No. 8 is critical thinking — critical thinking occurs when we evaluate the reasoning that leads to conclusions. While the testimony of witnesses seems to “prove” that the teenager was the killer, it is still necessary to evaluate the reasoning given by others. This is in contrast to other people, who only found words to support their conclusions in the prosecutor’s statements, rather than in the “doubt-analysis-doubt” evaluation cycle. Therefore, they showed a lot of errors that should not occur in critical thinking in the dialogue， and that’s a mistake we often make.
post-cinema 