Last week, Warner Bros. opened Juror #2 in limited release, with minimal fanfare, and no plans to report the film’s domestic box office. It’s not the typical treatment for a Clint Eastwood movie, especially one that some think might be the last Clint Eastwood movie. I hope they’re wrong. Either way, the fact that Eastwood’s longtime studio would bury his latest speaks to the various crises that have befallen the industry in general and Warner Bros. in particular. At 94, Eastwood seems ever more like an anomaly in American filmmaking: a Hollywood legend with nothing left to prove, still cranking out his unfussy, mid-budget dramas for a grown-up audience that the major studios have all but abandoned.

Juror #2 is actually one of his better-directed efforts of late, certainly compared with recent disappointments like Cry Macho and The Mule. There’s a little old-school John Grisham in this movie’s legal-thriller DNA, even though it features an original screenplay, by Jonathan Abrams.

Nicholas Hoult stars as Justin Kemp, a Georgia-based magazine writer who’s expecting a baby with his wife, played by Zoey Deutch. It’s a high-risk pregnancy, and so the timing isn’t ideal when Justin gets selected as a juror in a major murder trial.

The defendant, James Sythe, stands accused of killing his girlfriend, Kendall Carter, after the two had a heated argument in a bar one night. As the facts of the case emerge, Justin, who is recovering from alcoholism, realizes that he was at that same bar on the very night in question — and that he hit something he had assumed was a deer while driving home.

Suddenly alarmed that he could be more involved in Kendall’s death than he thought, Justin seeks advice from his AA sponsor, Larry, who also happens to be a lawyer. Larry, played by Kiefer Sutherland, advises Justin to keep quiet, lest he face serious prison time. But Justin, worried that his silence could send an innocent man to prison, tries to plead Sythe’s case during deliberations, which quickly turn contentious.

There’s a creakiness to the writing here; the bickering sounds forced, and some of the jurors veer toward cultural stereotypes. But others are more sharply drawn: J.K. Simmons brings his hard-nosed intelligence to the role of one of Justin’s few allies, while Cedric Yarbrough finds the simmering tension in every line as a juror convinced of the defendant’s guilt.

It all plays like a barbed riff on 12 Angry Men, where one man seeks to sway his fellow jurors, not to bring about justice so much as assuage his own conscience. But Justin isn’t the only character held up for moral scrutiny. The courtroom’s most compelling figure is the prosecutor, Faith, played with terrific nuance by Toni Collette. Faith does her job with skill, integrity and a great deal of ambition; she’s running for district attorney, and she knows that securing a conviction could help her chances.

Collette and Hoult played a mother and son in the 2002 comedy About a Boy. And while the actors don’t share too much screen time in Juror #2, beyond one doozy of a late scene, it’s still a pleasure to see them reunited more than 20 years later. Hoult is especially strong as a man wrestling quietly with past demons and present dilemmas, and whose response is to rationalize like crazy. After all, maybe Sythe, a man known for his rough past, really did kill his girlfriend. And even if he didn’t, how can Justin turn himself in, just as he and his wife are about to start a family?

Eastwood may take his characters to task, but he also sees the bigger picture. He’s long had a skeptical view of institutions and their failings, whether it’s a corrupt police force in Changeling or the manipulations of the media in movies like Sully and Richard Jewell. In Juror #2, he takes measured aim at the American justice system, from the dogged attorneys muddling their way through the evidence to the exhausted jurors who just want to deliver a quick verdict to the procedural fault lines and blind spots that can make the truth seem so elusive.

It’s a thorny, thoughtful film, and I wish its own studio had more confidence in it. If Eastwood does make another one, I wouldn’t mind seeing him take on another broken American system rife with cynicism, self-interest and compromise — and that, of course, is Hollywood itself.

If you had asked me to go on a date with someone who was barely out of prison, my answer would be an immediate no. I am not someone with Bonnie and Clyde syndrome, and I have never initiated anything with a known ex-con. My dad used to make fun of me for being someone who sticks to rules — almost to a fault. I hated when he double parked or ignored posted signs.

Then I met Mr. Hollywood on a dating app.

As I get older, using dating apps puts me in a smaller and smaller mating pool. Most men my age or younger date younger or are married and looking for something on the side. I’m a health food-eating meditator who is rather arty. I have not made a fortune yet, and I want to find a partner, not a paramour.

I’m not everyone’s style. Men no longer look at me as a woman to mold. They just see that I don’t drink, don’t smoke and have aged out of being a pinup.

I was intrigued by Mr. Hollywood. He was cute. He had a nice profile that depicted a clean-cut, slightly geeky guy. He was more computer tech than Miami drug dealer. His profile showed that he relished the outdoors, was a fit runner, enjoyed films and had homes in two states. His kids liked him, and he looked kind.

When he sent a rose my way, I thought, why not meet him? We texted, then talked, so I was fairly sure he was not catfishing me — that’s so common now on dating apps. He immediately asked me to dinner. That was different. Almost no one did that. Coffee, sure. A walk, maybe. Committing to an early evening out felt good. It had been a long time since anyone had asked. I said yes.

Then he sent me something to read.

“See if you still want to meet me after you read this,” he said. I was a tad reticent to click a link. Potential scammers on LinkedIn have sent me private messages with URLs to jobs that may or may not have been real. (I generally delete them instead of finding out.) So why would I trust a link from a random guy I’d interacted with only on my phone?

Instead, I searched his name and the headline of the article and easily found what I was looking for. He had been in prison for selling drugs. He had been in prison for selling drugs. The article definitely sided with Mr. Hollywood and his business partner. It said, in so many words, they had been wrongly accused of being “kingpins” and did not deserve their 20-year sentences. Well, I thought, this won’t be a boring dinner. I’d like to hear his story.

He set the date for the first night he’d be back in L.A., and I gave him a few restaurant ideas. He picked one close to me in Santa Monica. That was nice. I could walk there.

I learned that he found out he was autistic in middle age but always thought he was neurodivergent, even if that term was not yet in the zeitgeist. I found him to be charming. He pulled my chair out for me and was the right amount of interested. He was the perfect gentleman, along with having a Hollywood producer cool. Producing movies was his passion; selling drugs allegedly made him a lot of money to pursue it.

He loved his dinner. The conversation flowed. He sneaked in “I’m not a good person” so innocuously that the old me would have overlooked it. Current me heard it like a Rebound ringtone.

Prior to dinner, I would have thought that sentence was his wounded self, which needed love and attention to heal. I was raised by a sweet henpecked father, who would have said something disparaging about himself to get me to help him with his computer or read tiny print. I used to rush in, taking on the helper role because it offered warmth and a modicum of love. That pattern never worked in relationships and was exactly what I wasn’t looking for.

But the sentence went by fast, and he seemed genuinely interested in perhaps working together. He even said during dinner something like, “I’m feeling like we’ve got a collaborating-on-work vibe more than romance going here.”

I agreed. But then, he said that he was feeling a lot of attraction for me. It was nice to hear. The flattery was quickly flattened. He divulged that he could be going back to prison soon. He had another court date coming up.

As the date ended, he made sure I would be OK getting home on my own and asked me to send him a specific script I’d written, which doubled as the “Yes, I did get home safely” text. I later looked up more information to see what I might have missed about him. Other than a couple of giant red flags, our dinner was a fun date — something I haven’t had in far too long. Instead of being disappointed, I felt more hopeful about dating in general.

I sent him the script, and he responded he’d read it soon. I followed up a couple of weeks later, and he said he was woefully behind. Unlike men I had gone out with, the ones who strung me along knowing we were not couple material, he simply never contacted me again.

I didn’t feel rejected. I felt like he gently slipped away after a nice dinner. His approach wasn’t criminal. It was closer to heroic. I hope he finds a Bonnie to his Clyde and lives a long and happy life.

The author has written live-action scripts and animation. She lives in Los Angeles.

L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.

Hugh Grant in Heretic.

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Hugh Grant in Heretic.

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In the claustrophobic thriller Heretic, two young Mormon missionaries (Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East) knock on the door of a charming man played by Hugh Grant. At first he seems genuinely interested in learning more, and invites them in. But it quickly becomes clear that this guy doesn’t actually want to have a good-faith discussion.

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