Juror 8 (2019) is the first feature film of my new oppa Park Hyung-sik (PHS). It is based on the first jury trial of South Korea in 2019. It won for PSH the best new actor award in 2019 at the 39th Korean Association of Film Critics Award and the most popular actor of the 40th Blue Dragon Award.
PSH plays Kwon Nam-woo, a entrepreneur, who is hard up with sustaining his newly patented device against assaulters. He becomes Juror No. 8 and together with a group of seven other jurors from diversified backgrounds, tries a poor man with a deformed face and no fingers, accused of killing his own mother. The female presiding judge, Kim Joon-gyeom (Moon So-re) faces the test of making this first jury trial a success as demanded by the judiciary and the people. She always has the Chief justice always reminding her of the PR side of the first jury trial. Yet Judge Kim is focused on the trial itself and lends an ear and supports the jury.
The movie kept me glued to the screen for the whole 114 minutes of the English subbed version on YouTube. Apart from the fact that I like movies based on true events (although not an accurate account) , I found most interesting the development of the jury’s engagement in the case from a-let’s-get-over -with-this-case attitude to a this man’s-life -depends-on-our-judgement. The change in the attitude of the jurors were influenced by Juror 8 Nam-woo, who had a close encounter with the defendant (Kang Doo-shik played by Seo Hyeon-woo) when he got lost in the court building while looking for the civilian appeals office.
As I am not knowledgable on the Korean jury system, so I do not understand why Nam-woo wanted desperately to go this office even when he knows the jury is not allowed to go out. I failed to catch the reason in the movie; I assume that he wanted to leave the jury because of his pending loan application. That close encounter of Nam-woo with Kang was instrumental in developing his empathy towards Kang (although I am not sure if close encounters with the defendant is allowed in the jury system). Nam-woo drops his anti-assault device and it rolls over to the cell-holding area of Kang. As Kang handed the device to Nam-woo, the latter notices Kang has a deformed hand.
At Nam-woo’s insistence, the jury requests for a hammer test to check if Kang can swing a hammer. Unfortunately, the hammer slips out of Kang’a hand and hits the nape of the presiding judge and injures her so the case was adjourned temporarily. The next request was to see the case records and finally, to inspect the crime scene.
In the end, the juror gave a guilty verdict but retracted this after Nam-woo and the jury realized that the mother could have committed suicide.
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Judge Kim reverses the court’s guilty verdict as well after remembering the principle in criminal law that when in doubt, one should consider the interest of the defendant first. Thus the first jury trial in Korea gives a not guilty verdict.
Moon So-ri gave an excellent and credible performance as Presiding Judge Kim. Park Hyung-shik portrayed Nam-woo as the persistent youth to a hilt. It was also my first time to see PSH in a non-romantic role. However, the trademark boyish charm is still very evident here.
The film is generally a light legal drama and fast paced on a serious subject. For a change, instead of judges and lawyers taking center change in legal dramas, this time, the spotlight is on the citizens participating in this judicial process.
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