Besides his work on the 1978 Diana Ross and Michael Jackson-starring cult classic “The Wiz,” I know the late, great director Sidney Lumet for his legal/courtroom dramas such tas “The Verdict” and “Find Me Guilty.” I was first introduced to such works in college when a criminal justice professor showed my class Lumet’s first feature film, “12 Angry Men.” The movie allows viewers to become flies on the wall as a jury who, on the hottest day of the year, is sent into the deliberation room to unanimously decide whether to send an 18-year-old murder suspect to the electric chair.Though the then 33-year-old Lumet had the simple goal of just getting his first feature film under his belt, “12 Angry Men” would go on to become one of the director’s greatest films.
For me, a feature about 12 hot and sweaty jurors doing their civic duty in a cramped
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