Netflix continues its streak with thought-provoking and riveting films with Aaron Sorkin’s “The Trial of the Chicago 7”. Aaron Sorkin has got to be one of the greatest and most interesting screenwriters of Cinema with writing such classics as “The Social Network”, “A Few Good Men”, and what I consider his greatest controversially, “Moneyball”. I honestly was not fond of him as a director with “Molly’s Game” although I still liked the film. With “The Trial of the Chicago 7”, he drastically improves on his predecessor with almost every cylinder of it.
“Chicago 7” tells the staggering true story of eight defendants whom were charged by the federal government with a secret conspiracy to riot. Not just that, but all of them were charged with creating protests related to ending the Vietnam War as well as counterculture.
Honestly, “The Trial of Chicago 7” is not a perfect movie in my eyes because there are certain things with Aaron Sorkin as a director I would eliminate. What I can take away from this film is that it is indeed another rousing drama from him which totally reminisced me of investing ’90’s court room dramas like “The People vs. Larry Flynt”, “A Time to Kill”, and even the Aaron Sorkin-written “A Few Good Men”.
One thing I really want to note first is that I feel like “The Devil All the Time” has left its Olympic pedestal for the best ensemble of 2020. Aaron Sorkin nearly commands the commited ensemble of “Chicago 7” to absolute perfection, which is the film’s strongest strength. I might have found one of the first potential Oscar contenders for Best Supporting Actor. 82-year old Frank Langella as Judge Julius Hoffman might be one of the most despicable and gruesome people I have seen in a film since the police in “The Hate U Give”. No spoilers, but he is a human being you want to punch his raw guts out for his lack of common sense. If Chadwick Boseman’s posthumous performance in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” did not come out this year, there would be no competition.
Although he does struggle with the American accent a little bit, Sacha Baron Cohen is absolutely dynamite as one of the eight defendants, Abbie Hoffman. He perfectly captures the energy and rowdiness of him and is surprisingly quite hilarious, too. He along with Langella are both very worthy of an Oscar nomination with the type of range they utilize. The same also goes to the other actors including the electrifying Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Eddie Redmayne, Mark Rylance, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and underrated character actor John Carroll Lynch. Almost every actor has their defining Oscar-clip in the film. Unlike Baron Cohen where he struggles it, Redmayne and Rylance actually do superb American accents. I am surprised both Kelvin Harrison, Jr. and Michael Keaton were not in the movie that much.
Sorkin recaps history in such a raw way as usual with incorporating such a uneasy and harrowing feeling of being in a court room with those people. That is why I think it reminisced me of his dialogue in “A Few Good Men”. Not to mention, there are obviously scenes involving protests where you want to injure those nasty rascals known as the police.
To be fully aware, “Chicago 7” is a film that completely relies on dialogue throughout the film. Aaron Sorkin, as a director, is a brilliant master of writing dialogue when it comes to this film, but he can definitely stumble on some key technical elements. The cinematography can fall very flat at certain times where it honestly looked blurry. That was one of my main complaints with his last directed film “Molly’s Game”. With how he handles dialogue, it can be very clunky whenever there is a scene that does not take place in the court room. Those moments I could see a different director handling it better than him.
I feel so bad for typing this, but the absolute worst part of the film was Daniel Pemberton’s hideous musical score. I loved his scores in the past, but it sounded like something from a modern day “Law & Order” episode. I am not even kidding myself. There are major scenes where I wanted the score to be vanished in its entirety.
If people declared this as Oscar-bait, it can be understandable. To me, it can also be understandable that Aaron Sorkin is a stronger writer than a director. However, from what I saw in “The Trial of the Chicago 7”, I still found this to be an incredibly rousing court room drama from Aaron Sorkin that demands an important watch for everyone especially for people whom experienced the riots. What saves this film from being weak are the brilliantly committed ensemble cast and Sorkin’s most razor-sharp dialogue since “Moneyball” in 2011. Expect this to be the first huge Oscar contender of 2020. The whole world’s watching.
Grade: 8.5/10
