"You're a pretty smart fella, aren't you?" - The legacy of 12 Angry Men

In the history of great cinema directorial debuts, Sidney Lumet's 1957 classic 12 Angry Men may be the most iconic of them all. Though only a minor success financially, it was a foreshadowing of events to come - the civil rights movements that would sweep America in the 1960s and the social and racial upheaval's that changed the face of what it could mean to be American. At the same time, the film captured the exact moment it was made: the cusp of the wave of change. 

 The structure was dif...