Review: The Trial Of The Chicago 7

In this very strange cinematic year we’ve had in 2020, getting a release seems to be a once in a full moon type event so getting a release that’s actually rated highly can equate to blue moon status. I bring this up because Netflix’s The Trial Of The Chicago 7 would’ve been on my Watch List for its high rating and involvement from Aaron Sorkin anyway but given that there’s nothing else to see, that pushed it higher on the list, and good thing too because this shed some light on a part of history I didn’t know about and which still holds a lot of weight in today’s climate.

In August, 1968, three separate groups of Anti-War protesters all arrive in Chicago to protest the Vietnam war at the Democratic National Convention, the three groups – the Students For A Democratic Society (SDS), the Youth Independent Party (YIP) and the National Mobilized Committee To End The War In Vietnam (MOBE) – all arrive with the same goal of peaceful protest while at the same time, a chapter of the Black Panther Party was in Chicago at the same time though unrelated to the protests.

Five months later, 7 members of the parties were arrested after the protests turned violent against the police, Tom Hayden and Rennie Davis of the SDC, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin on the YIP, David Dellinger of MOBE and Lee Weiner and John Froines who seemed to have little affiliation with any group. Eighth member Bobby Seale, Chairman of the Black Panthers, was also arrested under the same riot charge despite not being part of the protest. Wanting to make an example of them, the prosecuting attorneys charge the 8 defendants with conspiracy to incite violence by all three and the panthers working together to arrive in Chicago, looking got a confrontation with the police. What followed was six months of legal bullshit, constitutional ignorance and sheer frustrations as the men fight a system stacked against them for the sheer gall to be free thinking Americans.

I can’t speak for accuracy – I’ve read that it’s dramatised in some places but toned down in others – but on its own merits this is a strong story, the majority of the film is focussed on the trial and the utter pandemonium that came from it whilst occasionally flashing back to the events to led to the arrest of the 7. It’s interesting that we never actually see the riots until near the end, Sorkin makes it pretty clear that the system is already against these men so I doubt it was for ambiguity, rather I think he used the flashbacks to highlight how fragile the American people were at the time, because riots did happen and showing them happen with little clue as to the cause until the end paints the picture of a nation at war with itself, a nation which is still at war with itself today.

On the flip-side, the trial was more cut and dry but all the more infuriating as well with hostile defendants, frustrated lawyers and a cunty judge who had already charged the 7 as guilty before the trial even began, it’s insane the stuff they included and they stuff they cut out even more so. What Sorkin does cleverly though is tailor the story towards modern day political beliefs, how the police handle rioters with complete distain, how left-leaning activists will argue over how far their protests will go leading to in-fighting where there should be a united front, how life-time position on the bench can lead to judges not able to do their own fucking jobs due to declining mental capacity. It’s all stuff that still rings true today and being able to see the parallels is sometimes humorous but often horrible.

The only part I wasn’t sold on was the ending which felt a little too on-the-nose for cheesiness but apparent that was made up for the film so I can overlook it as Hollywood bullshit and not let it distract from the rest of the film.

Due to the ensemble nature of the film there’s a couple performances that got sidelined although impressively the vast majority of the cast delivered great or even brilliant performances. The only sidelines I can think of were Lee Weiner and John Froines who even the film classifies as only being there so the jury can set them free and not feel guilty about indicating the other five. And while his time onscreen amounted to only a few minutes, I would’ve liked to have seen more of Michael Keaton as Randall Clarke simply because it’s Keaton and he used those few minutes the best way he could.

From the SDS, Eddie Redmayne took centre stage as Tom Hayden while Alex Sharp stood behind him as Rennie Davis. Not to detract from Sharp’s performance, he played Davis with the right mixture of caution and distain that a young democratic student would have but out of the two of them Redmayne was the star, arguable the star of the whole film. Out of the whole 7, Tom is the one that struggles most with distancing himself from due process, he’s a man of politic, believing that the system needs to be changed from the inside and on a level playing field which puts him at odds with his other, more radicalised comrade. And it’s understandable why, Tom’s well read, he’s clean-cut, probably never been in trouble with the police until the last few years, he stands out from the crowd because he’s not the type to be arrested and Redmayne – putting on a pretty impressive accent by the way – plays into that well, making Tom out to be a little too ingrained into the system to truly fight against it but too outside to accept its flaws, it’s a small but strong arc that Redmayne makes the most out of.

From the YIP, also called Yippies by themselves, were Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, played by Sacha Baron Cohen and Jeremy Strong respectively, Strong touched upon some surprising comic relief, making Rubin a stoned out old hippie for the new generation, complete with classes on making Molotov cocktails and getting cat-fished by a pretty policewoman. Thankfully though there was more to him than that, including a great scene of heroism when a demonstration goes wrong, for all his hippie qualities there’s a reason he’s fighting injustice. Cohen as Abbie though, might just be the best performance in the film and the Oscar buzz around him is well-warranted, Abbie is someone who has been fighting for civil liberties basically all his life, he’s a radicalised rascal, taking small joys out of pissing off the establishment even if it means fucking himself over to get his point across. Cohen’s charisma plays heavily into how well Abbie is presented, between his jokes in court and his comedy routine where he regales his adventures to a student crowd, the guy is easy to listen to and his don’t give a fuck attitude even more so, but what makes Cohen work so well is when Abbie has to get serious, he knows how important this trial is and once he realises he has to stop joking then Cohen brings in a surprising dramatic turn that I wasn’t expecting but he makes it work wonders for the film.

What’s interesting is that both Tom and Abbie are on the same side but can’t agree on their ways of achieving the same goal, Tom wants to be patient, to win elections and work the system from the inside, a slow process with no guarantee while Abbie wants to take the fight to the people and change the cultural landscape, a more rewarding experience but with even less of a guaranteed success. Both men want the same thing, Abbie even admits to reading some of Tom’s works later in the film, but can’t agree on an end-goal, and in today’s society that carries more weight than you think. Where policies like Black Lives Matter, the Me Too Movement, even just the Democratic Party themselves, all have differing ideas of the same ideology and can’t get passed the infighting in order to prevent the Right Leaning Policies from taking hold and fucking them all over.

Rounding out the defendants were David Dellinger, played by John Carroll Lynch who I still can’t disassociate away from being the Zodiac and Bobby Seale played by Yahya Abdul-Manteen. Lynch is a little more towards the sidelined portions but he’s convincing in the role as the pacifist – disregarding his one fictional scene of violence which is shitting on the non-violent beliefs of the real man a little too much for my liking – and his attempts to keep the peace in a world where violence is just met with violence was an interesting turn that I think the film could’ve done more with. Manteen though, was given a lot to do, his role as Bobby Seale fully highlighted how bastardised this case was from the start, since he wasn’t part of the initial 7 he didn’t have the same lawyer but since his lawyer was having surgery and since the Judge, for unknown, probably racist reasons, didn’t excuse him from the courts, Bobby had to be processed without legal counsel. Manteen’s absolute fury at having to deal with such bullshit from a fucking judge is palpable and you can feel his hate radiated off the screen, he plays Bobby as well-spoken but short-tempered, getting worse and worse the more his righteous pleas for a fair trial are ignored, leading to a scene that is unfortunately very real and even worse in reality.

From the courts, Mark Rylance gives a great performance as William Kunstler, the lawyer for the 7 whose idea of fair process is eroded more and more in the months he has to deal with the senility of a judge that shouldn’t even be in the building, let alone as a judge. Like Bobby Seale you can feel Rylance’s anger building with every new roadblock he has to face, whenever he seems to get a break the system tell him to fuck off and he’s back with nothing, it’s an impossible battle but that seems to empower William even more to fight harder and prove that this broken ass legal system cannot bully its way into victory. It’s a great role and Rylance gives it his all, not pulling any punches because he knows the system won’t with his clients and he has to prepare them for that, even if they end up hating him for it.

Prosecuting attorney Richard Schultz, played by Joseph Gordon Levitt, is another sidelined character but Levitt does a decent job showing the reluctance of a man trying to do his job of maintaining due process but seeing the inequity of the courtroom makes it harder for him to believe he’s on the right side. The reason Schultz is pushed to the sides is because the real villain is Frank Langella as Judge Julius Hoffman (no relation to Abbie), holy shit I have not hated a movie character this much since Umbridge and fair play to Langella he does not hold back on giving you a reason to despise him – if anything the film has actually toned him down to be realistic. Hoffman is instantly hateable from his very first scene, he consistently gets defendants names wrongs even after being corrected, he refuses to hear any proper objections, usually around Bobby Seale’s wish for a lawyer, his ideas of compromise spit in the face of the very system he’s enforcing – telling Kunstler to be Bobby’s lawyer due to proximity despite Kunstler not having prepared to defend Bobby since he’s not a client – and he openly disregards anything that would help defend the 7 for no other reason than ‘Fuck em’. He is a fantastically despicable villain and Langella makes him so easy to hate, and so easy to worry about when you realise how many judges in real life probably have the same senility, the same uncaring nature and how many of them are actually even worse.

I’ve not seen Sorkin’s directing work before – this is only his 2nd film behind the camera – but he’s been highly regarded as a writer for decades, being the brain behind West Wing, A Few Good Men and The Social Network and the script is clearly one of the highlights here, with Sorkin using the insanity of the trial to push forward both the injustice faced by the 7 but also the injustice faced today, it’s one of those films where watching it you realise how little has changed and even the small victories are tinged with the knowledge that nothing’s changed, the police still attack protestors wanting change, people are still treated differently because of their class, their creed and their race. Things might be dramatised but the message is clear and has been for the 50 years since the real trial as well.

As director Sorkin also does solid work, the court room is still the main focal point of the whole film and the way Sorkin is able to utilise the brash moments of overlapping talk and arguments with moments of sheer silence broken by fury is very well done – Rylance has a great line read which strikes through the entire scene like a lightning bolt. He also uses the shaky narrative to great effect of tension building, bouncing between a witness describing their event in court, to Abbie retelling his event in his comedy routine to the actual even itself, making the multiple points all converge together to disorient you slightly about where your focus should be. It works a lot better than I’m describing it, the main point being an early altercation where Jerry and Rennie try to take their people AWAY from riot cops in the city, only to be met with even more cops at their main base in the park. It’s a harsh sequence to watch, made even more so by Sorkin’s use of actual footage from the riot spliced in between the violence, and seeing the truth, hearing the lies and knowing the outcome presents your brain with so much information that it’s difficult to keep up but then so was the riot, you don’t have the time to think when you’re being attacked, just react.

The Trial Of The Chicago 7 is one of those throwback movies to something like 12 Angry Men, or even Sorkin’s own A Few Good Men, it’s a film that presents us a simple idea and then throws everything it can to make simplistic difficult. The trial is long, frustrating and relevant with a lot of the issues facing the 7 still hitting hard today, the cast is across the board fantastic with Redmayne, Cohen, Rylance, Manteen and Langella all worth watching the film for alone just to see how they all interact with each other and Sorkin’s timely script combined with his engaging courtroom setting keeps you invested in watching this trial play out in the hopes that something good can come out of this absolutely mess.

8.5/10