Tam Do

(Spoiler Alert) A fun movie to watch and a good lesson to learn. 12 Angry Men represent different types of people in our life. By showing how different jurors react to the case, the movie reflects how we react to events in our life. The movie also highlights a lot of principles of negotiation that we all can learn from. For example, the use of objective criteria for effective negotiation. In the movie, objective criteria were used by Juror 8, in contrast to subjective assumptions made by other Jurors. Juror 7 justified his ‘guilty’ verdict against the boy with prejudices against his past: “he was from reform school. He stole a car. He’s been arrested for mugging…”. Added to that, Juror 4 condescendingly claimed that “The children come out of slum backgrounds are potential menaces to the society.” However, Juror 3 made a valid point that when a child grows older, he can choose to be more violent and choose to use fists instead of running away. But for all example listed above, none are based on current facts or objective criteria but come from very personal perspectives for experiences. In response to their subjectivity, Juror 8 consistently brought up objective criteria that were based on reasons and continuously asked questions to prompt other Jurors to come to their derivations from reasons and logic. When Juror 6 mentioned the argument between the boy and the father, implying that the motive of the boy was to kill his father out of anger, Juror 8 questioned: “What does that prove?”. The question invited Juror 6 to rethink and had to admit that it did not prove anything. As the story goes, Juror 8 mentioned several criteria, which helped all assess the likelihood that the boy was the real killer. These include the point at which the elevated train could top speed, the possibility that there were many switchblades resembling that was used by the killer, the correlation between the distance from the window to the elevated tracks and the volume of sound heard and so on. This has helped him gain more votes from other Jurors who were convinced by objectivity and logic.