The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)

The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)

7/10

Starring

Sacha Baron Cohen

Eddie Redmayne

Daniel Flaherty

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Michael Keaton

Frank Langella

John Carroll Lynch

Mark Rylance

Directed by Aaron Sorkin

The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a movie well structured not just to be a documentary or real life event tale, it dares to be more, touching all aspects. The Chicago 7 trial happened in 1968 when some groups went against the Vietnam war. The movie resonates on many terms touching all the different aspects at play from trial manipulation, biased system, politics, crocked judge and jury tampering. It does all this while keeping an eye on the main chaos at hand. The movie is well written not to bore, but to entertain and educate also on the length the government will go to indict seven people for causing riots.

What I liked is the flow of the movie. Aaron Sorkin the director and writer takes us forward with the trial and back with scenes that led up to the events of the trial. as we see how the men’s behavior can be misconstrued by a well orchestrated team to be inciting riots.

The courtroom drama has everything you will expect, shocking revelations and shocking behavior from the trial judge.

The plot shows us eight people arrested and trialed by the government for inciting riots. The eight person was Bobby Seale. Seale’s case was dropped and termed a mistrial by the prosecutors mainly because he was without counsel and the judge’s behavior towards him was hostile. The remaining seven had to go on with the trial and that is when the masterful acting from Mark Rylance. Mark plays the lead lawyer of the seven William Kunstler.

The trial is filled with all the necessary twist and turns for the needed excitement with unruly behaviors and a biased judge. The judge is played by wonderfully Frank Langella who was ready to do what it takes to make sure everyone from the defendant side including their lawyers get a prison sentence.

The case of the seven seems to be an easy win for the prosecutors because with the judge in their corner, the was nothing anyone could do to make things go in their favor.

When it comes to performances from others on play, we have the ones of Eddie Redmayne and Sacha Baron Cohen to admire.

This was meant to have a theatrical release, but the covid-19 pandemic led to it having its distribution right bought by Netflix. It is a wonderful film to see, which has a fun production history as the film was written for production way back in 2007 and the Writers Guild of America strike led to suspension of the production. So the movie floated in limbo for over a decade before getting back on the production cycle.