The Chicago Seven (originally eight) were political radicals accused of conspiring to incite the riots that occurred at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. There are moments, particularly at the beginning and end, where Chicago 7 stumbles, but for the most part, the courtroom drama is a compelling celebration of protest even if it falls short in capturing the racial and gender dynamics of protest movements. COLLIDER participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means COLLIDER gets paid commissions on purchases made through our links to retailer sites. So if you need a film … By continuing to use the site, you accept our Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy. On paper, “The Trial of the Chicago 7” feels like it could be a bit of Aaron Sorkin’s greatest hits. Send us a tip using our anonymous form. If you’re going to tell a story about the seriousness of protest movements (and Chicago 7 has more than a few shots of protestors getting their heads bashed in by cops), then it really needs to hit home in a way that the film never totally manages because it’s coasting on slick dialogue and charming performances. Wants to Turn 'Sherlock Holmes' into Cinematic Universe, Marvel-Style, 'The 355' Poster Finds Jessica Chastain Leading Star-Studded Spy Shenanigans, Cynthia Nixon on 'Ratched', Whether She'd Join 'AHS', & Julian Fellowes' 'The Gilded Age', The Collider Podcast, Ep. Sign up for our newsletter. CLICK HERE TO TURN ON NOTIFICATIONS. Click the button below and wait for a message from our Facebook bot in Messenger! They were joined by Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), who had nothing to do with the protests and was only in Chicago for four hours on the day in question, but he was a Black Panther, so his presence was to “scare” the jury. Grade: A- Writer-director Aaron Sorkin, the creator and writer … The argument the film seems to be making is that while our current media shows police coming after Black protestors, white men need to remember that their white skin will not save them if they disrupt the power of the state. The question of how we approach protest is an important one because it needs to be ingrained into our daily lives. And in this frame, you have a film that feels kind of like empty calories. The organizers — who included Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden and Bobby Seale — were charged with conspiracy to incite a riot, and what followed was one of the most bizarre trials in U.S. history. For the “high crime” of protesting the Vietnam War, the state wanted to send seven random white guys to prison for a decade. The film is pretty sharp on how it shows that protest movements are inherently messy by showing the competing views of Hayden and Hoffman, but beyond mining that for good dramatic conflict, I’m not sure what Chicago 7 does beyond arguing that protest is good and suppressing protest is not only bad but inherently leads to violence. I think even Sorkin would agree that our institutions have become infected with bad actors who seek to turn those institutions against the people they were meant to protect. It is an entertaining movie. The protests at the convention and the trial give birth to the slogan “The whole world is watching,” and they are both recreated and shown in archival footage, a fascinating mix of feature and documentary film-making. When you remove the fairness of that institution, America doesn’t seem to matter very much. They were looking to find out who was responsible for this. Seale is on trial because he is Black and a co-founder of the Black Panther Party, and yet Sorkin struggles to do more with Seale than to use him as a symbol. Chicago 7 grazes up against how the system doesn’t work for people like Seale, but it never hammers the point home because the film is trying to tell a story about a protest movement with white people at its center. In the supporting cast, among the standouts are Caitlin Fitzgerald (“Succession”) as undercover FBI agent Daphne O’Connor, who loses her perspective, but not her composure, and Alice Kremelberg as the defendants’ sharp-tongued receptionist. Whereas in that fictionalized courtroom of A Few Good Men a small group of determined lawyers could get to the truth (which, it turns out, they could in fact handle), in the real events that inspired Chicago 7, there’s no justice to be found. The other side of that coin is that this is a movie that largely belongs to white men as almost all Sorkin stories must (even Molly’s Game has a terrible scene where a white man explains Molly’s story to her). In This Article: The upcoming films stars Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Sacha Baron Cohen, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Keaton, Frank Langella, John Carroll Lynch, Eddie Redmayne, Mark Rylance, Alex Sharp, Jeremy Strong, Noah Robbins, Danny Flaherty, Ben Shenkman, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Caitlin Fitzgerald, Alice Kremelberg, John Doman, J.C. MacKenzie, Damien Young, Wayne Duvall and C.J. At the top of the heap are Sacha Baron Cohen, who excels in spite of British accent slippage, as defendant, social and political activist Abbie Hoffman, the publicity hound and co-head of the Youth International Party aka Yippies; Jeremy Strong of “Succession” as Hoffman’s lonely-hearts buddy and YIP co-founder Jerry Rubin; Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as a fiery Bobby Seale, a Black Panther leader tried without representation and famously gagged and shackled; protean Englishman Mark Rylance as wise, low-key attorney William Kunstler; the great Frank Langella as the famously intolerant Chicago Judge Julius Hoffman; Academy award-winner Eddie Redmayne as activist and social theorist Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman’s opposite; John Carroll Lynch as actual Boy Scout leader, husband, father and defendant David Dellinger; and a cool-as-ice Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the lead prosecuting attorney Richard Schultz. But to the film’s credit (and I’ll be fully willing to admit that I might be giving Sorkin more credit than he is due), the film is designed to reach out to the most comfortable of all Americans—white men. Movies like A Few Good Men and The American President reaffirm a belief in our institutions, and The West Wing is essentially a fairy tale of good-hearted people committed to good governance. OK. James Verniere has a master's degree from Rutgers University, where he has taught writing. “The trial was trying to show that these guys were the bad guys, and that didn’t make any sense to me.”. By Ty Burr Globe Staff, Updated September 24, 2020, 9:00 p.m. From left: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II … It was always meant to be about today. In this way, it can seem retrograde to put seven white guys at the center of a story about protest. Robert Downey Jr. By continuing to use the site, you accept our. Who’s responsible for all these protesters? MOVIE REVIEW “THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7” Rated R. At Landmark Kendall Square. So they invented leaders so that they could target the demonstrators.”, “I decided to show up and help make the point that I was sympathetic to [the defendants], even though I disagreed with how they were going about it,” he added. In September 1969, protestors Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne), Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp), Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen), Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong), David Dellinger (John Caroll Lynch), Lee Weiner (Noah Robbins), and John Froines (Danny Flaherty). Chicago 7 is Sorkin’s first courtroom drama since his breakthrough A Few Good Men, and his new film almost plays like a rebuke of that story.Whereas in … 'The Trial of the Chicago 7' ... where you can mainline film 24/7. As Americans, we like to see courtrooms as institutions designed to uphold the law, and the law is the foundation of America. Whether you were there devouring news about it daily or not, you must see “The Trial of the Chicago 7.”, (“The Trial of the Chicago 7” contains profanity, violence and drug use. Aaron Sorkin is not the name I think of when I think of political unrest, the counterculture, and protest movements. ': Patton Oswalt Says Hulu's Stop-Motion Animated Series Is Coming Early 2021. GET BREAKING NEWS IN YOUR BROWSER. Once Chicago 7 gets into a rhythm, it reveals itself as a stone-faced farce. Nothing was solved or changed, so the drama feels confined to the trial itself rather than taking a macro view of how this event shaped America or how it reflects our current situation. He is a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics and the National Society of Film Critics. He’s assembled a top-notch cast that does not disappoint, and the moment the film was over, I was eager to watch it again to see the great performances from Mateen, Cohen, Redmayne, Strong, Lynch, and Rylance. Sorkin, for the majority of his career, has been largely Capra-esque in his assessments of America, seeing the struggles but ultimately upholding institutions as good and just. We want to hear from you! And, of course, we are in Hoffman’s crazy courtroom, where some antics are hilarious; others outrageous. © Copyright 2020 Rolling Stone, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media, LLC. The film, directed by Aaron Sorkin, details an anti-war protest, counter-culture at the 1968 Democratic National Convention that turned violent when the police and the National Guard stepped in. And, yes, this movie, The Trial of the Chicago 7, was never meant to be about 1968. Five months after the violent conflicts at the 1968 Democratic Convention, the Nixon Justice Department decides to make an example of some of the protestors as a “fuck you” to outgoing Attorney General Ramsey Clark (Michael Keaton). We see the riot in Chicago’s Grant Park. 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As far as courtroom dramas go, the film employs strong cinematography from Phedon Papamichael and editing from Alan Baumgarten to keep the action moving. Our editorial content is not influenced by any commissions we receive. MOVIE REVIEW ‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’: 1969 can seem an awful lot like 2020. Wilson. “Protests are good” is a fine sentiment, but the culture is already there, and while Chicago 7 acknowledges that these protests will have internal conflict and face external violence, there needs to be more recognition that something has truly rotted America. His work has appeared in Film Comment, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, Sight and Sound and Heavy Metal Magazine, as well as books published by the National Society of Critics such as "The A List." But “The Trial of the Chicago 7” is so brilliantly cast and acted, it is not a problem to keep track of them at all. We see the police remove their badges and name tags and push demonstrators through the plate glass window of the Hilton Bar. © 2020 Collider Cryptomedia, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Sorkin’s dialogue remains as cutting and effervescent as ever. Before moving on, we need to talk about the various dynamics at play in Chicago 7. Although the Department of Justice of President Lyndon Johnson concluded that the rioting in Chicago had been caused by the Chicago police, the Nixon administration, including Nixon Attorney General John Mitchell (a terrific John Doman), wants scapegoats on the left and brings the accusations against the seven defendants.

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