雅思阅读：电影《十二怒汉》

　　英文介绍：

　　A teenaged Hispanic boy has just been tried for the murder of his father, and the case is now in the hands of the jury.. A guilty verdict will send the boy to the electric chair.

　　The case looks, on the surface, cut and dried, but one juror , despite his own feeling that the defendant is probably guilty, feels that the facts, at very least, merit a cursory review, before the jury hands in a guilty verdict. His insistence on a brief examination of the case seems to rub many on the jury the wrong way, as they continue to see the matter as open and shut.

　　Fascinatingly, in examination of the testimony and facts of the case, the experiences, personalities, attributes, limitations, and biases of the individual jurors weave in and out of the deliberation process, at times to its benefit and at times to its detriment.

　　To the benefit of the deliberation process, 1) the very elderly juror is the only one that can see a possible motive explaining why an elderly witness may have misled the court in his tetimony, 2) the one fellow who grew up in a rough neighborhood, where he witnessed numerous knife fights, is the only one who sees a problem in assuming that the defendant made the stab wound found, and 3) the juror who had done contract work by the elevated subway was the only one in a position to question what one of the witnesses might or might not have heard.

　　To the detriment of the deliberation process, 1) one juror is so consumed by his personal prejudices that he sees value in ridding the streets of the Hispanic defendant whether or not he is guilty, and 2) another juror is unopen to reason because he has been physically harmed by his teenaged son, and, consequently, views each and every teenaged boy, including the defendant, as capable of patricide.

　　The number of obstacles on the path to honest assessment of the facts is a constant threat to the deliberation process. Will this jury come together to find a verdict of either guilty or not guilty or will it be a hung jury ? Watching how this matter is resolved is a riveting study in the nature, and utimate beauty, of the trial by jury process.

　　简 介

　　一个在平民窟中长大的男孩被指控谋杀生父，旁观者和凶器均以呈堂铁证如山。担任此案陪审团的12个人要与案件结案前在陪审团休息室里讨论案情，并要一直通过讨论结果，才能正式结案。

　　十二个人各有自己的职业也生活，他们当中有巧舌如簧的广告商、仗义执言的工程师、毫无见地的富家子、歧视平民的新贵族、性情暴躁的老警察、精明冷静的银行家、只赶时间的推销员。每个人都有自己思考和说话的方式，但是除了亨利方达扮演的工程师之外，其余的人都对这个案子不屑一顾，在还未进行讨论之前就早早认定男孩就是杀人凶手。最终通过了各种不同人生观的冲突，各种思维方式的较量，所有的陪审团员都负责任地投出了自己神圣的一票。