The Trial of the Chicago 7

New on Netflix.

Aaron Sorkin writes and directs this dramatisation of the trial of seven men charged with starting a riot while protesting the Vietnam war at the 1968 Democratic party convention in Chicago.

If you’ve read reviews of mine before, you’ll know I’m a fan of good quality dramatisations of seemingly staggering corruption whether financial, legal or as is the case here Governmental. If you’ve seen Sorkin’s films before, you’ll know what to expect, smartly written, well directed and rock solid performances that tell a fascinating story.

We get all of that here, as always Sorkin uses plenty of well crafted dialogue to tell the story and when delivered by excellent performances throughout you get a compelling film.

The performances are what you’d expect from a cast of this quality, Eddie Redmayne as Tom Haydn the man at the centre, delivers a performance that doesn’t insist on him having to transform physically to tell his story, Sacha Baron Cohen’s Abbie Hoffman shows their’s much more to him than Borat and Mark Rylance brings his usual gravitas to the role of defence attorney William Kunstler. It seems unfair to pick out just a few performances as there is not a flat one amongst them.

The film is built around the court room scenes but thankfully avoids the cliched grandstanding full of “you can’t handle the truth” moments instead ratcheting up the frustration as it is abundantly clear the trial is nothing more than a politically motivated farce.

While it’s important not to think this is a documentary The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a really well made courtroom drama that tells a fascinating story of a seemingly politically motivated trial and while it is set at the turn of the 70’s of course it has parallels, although not overtly, with modern day politics.

This is a fascinating insight into late 60’s US society and politics and well worth a watch.