Juror #2

                    Nicholas Hoult and Clint Eastwood making “Juror #2. Warner Bros photo via IMDB.com

Cinema's version of the Energizer Bunny, Clint Eastwood is still going strong.

Warner Bros. is releasing “Juror #2” in time for awards season with his Malpaso Productions logo at the beginning and his “produced and directed by” credit at the end.

From “Gran Turino” to “The Mule” to “Cry Macho,” Clint has spent decades directing himself in what felt like farewell roles. “Unforgiven,” with its three Oscars including best picture, would have been a fitting swan song to a monumental career … and that was a quarter-century and some 25 movies ago.

In these unsettling times, it's reassuring to see that at 94 he's still at it. And has still got it.

A poster boy for getting old right.

Obviously “Juror # 2” is a courtroom drama but you're in a minefield of spoiler alerts trying to say much more about it. 

Nicholas Hoult has the title role in a cast co-starring Toni Collette with heavy hitters like J.K. Simmons and Kiefer Sutherland in the supporting ranks.

Breaking the conventional wisdom of the genre, “Juror #2” doesn't hinge on a surprise revelation in the courtroom. We know from the outset that Justin Kemp (Hoult) knows more about the murder case on the docket than he lets on during jury selection questioning by D.A. Faith Killebrew (Collette) and Public Defender Eric Resnick (Chris Messina.) 

Why does he keep quiet? We know the answer to that one, too.

Guess it's not a spoiler if it's the first line in the trailer.

Rather than craft a mystery, screenwriter Jonathan A. Abrams turns the formula inside out, creating more of a rumination on the difference between truth and justice, and the toll taken on people trying to sort them out. In this regard it's reminiscent of one of my favorite movies last awards season, “Anatomy of a Fall.” 

From the outset we know whodunnit. A more pertinent question is what does Guilty mean?

While Hoult never quite finds the right right note in his character's moral ambiguity, the performances around him – especially Simmons' and Collette's – keep things compelling. It may not be a mystery, but the outcome is still in doubt right up to the perfect last shot before the cut to black.

My personal history with Clint Eastwood goes back to 1983 when I covered him shooting, and starring in “Sudden Impact” in Santa Cruz. I shadowed him at a fish market on the Wharf, and in the neon light under the Big Dipper at the Boardwalk. I even got to be an extra in a night scene filmed at the old, pre-earthquake Cooper House, although my performance seems to have gotten lost in the cutting room.

Considering that he was both directing and acting, the one thing he was was efficient. No more than two takes, if he could help it. If it was in focus, it was a go. No drama, except what wound up on the screen. 

Later, when I interviewed him at the Maui Film Festival in 2002, he summed up what he did simply, as telling stories. No frills, no preciousness, which belies the scope of his projects – from musicals and composing soundtracks (he also plays piano), to directing and co-starring with Meryl Streep in “The Bridges of Madison County” or shooting “Letters from Iwo Jima” in Japanese.

“Juror #2” is closer to the “Sudden Impact” end of the spectrum: efficient, rather than flashy or artsy. It's a story told in close-ups, emotions played out in eyes and on faces rather than in words. It is, after all, a story based on what's not being said.

It is a work of craftsmanship more than art, the creation of a master comfortable in the larger-than-life profession, a man in his prime for almost a century now.