The Tri­al of the Chica­go 7

The spir­it of rev­o­lu­tion is in the air as a blood­thirsty squadron of mil­i­tarised cops face off against a march­ing coali­tion of left­ist fac­tions that can’t always see eye to eye about prax­is and policy.

This is 1968, and of course, an approx­i­mate sum­ma­tion of the now. Aaron Sorkin’s The Tri­al of the Chica­go 7 blazes out of the gate with a quick-cut pro­logue that sub­tex­tu­al­ly con­nects the hec­tic events of America’s most tur­bu­lent year (the MLK and Bob­by Kennedy assas­si­na­tions, the ramp­ing-up of anti-Viet­nam sen­ti­ments, a riot at the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion) to the con­flicts mir­rored in our present. It’s hard to tell whether it’s all time­ly or time­less, or whether those might be the same thing.

Either way, that’s just the open­ing sal­vo in Sorkin’s wider project of com­men­tary: resolv­ing the great quandary of how best to effect change in the face of internecine ide­o­log­i­cal dis­putes among pro­gres­sives. For­tu­nate­ly, as ever, his chief strength lies in his abil­i­ty to enliv­en what sounds dry on paper. The brisk open­ing sequence estab­lish­es the ener­gy lev­el that he’ll sus­tain for the com­ing two-plus hours of court­room crosstalk, a sta­t­ic pro­ceed­ing ren­dered kinet­ic and thrilling by Sorkin’s sig­na­ture Tom­my gun-dia­logue more so than his unadorned, plain direction.

The script is inter­mit­tent­ly fun­ny, giv­ing burnout Jer­ry Rubin (Jere­my Strong) some won­der­ful busi­ness with an egg, and the rest gets deliv­ered with fire and vim. Some­how, the gross mis­car­riage of jus­tice against inno­cent men has been made into a crack­ing good time.

The first min­utes also intro­duce Sorkin’s ambi­tion to gath­er under one big tent the com­pro­mis­ing prag­ma­tists, rep­re­sent­ed by Eddie Red­mayne as the strait-laced activist Tom Hay­den, and the rad­i­cal ide­al­ists, led by Sacha Baron Cohen as hip­pie provo­ca­teur Abbie Hoff­man. While gen­er­ous­ly enter­tain­ing from minute to minute, the film pays enough lip ser­vice to both sides of this mini-schism that nei­ther gets a com­pelling rea­son to budge. The far-left types need to be real­is­tic, and the mod­er­ates need to stick to their prin­ci­ples; real life has not quite borne out this equivalency.

Though those two men dif­fered wild­ly in their meth­ods, they shared a goal of peace, and so they were lumped in with six oth­er rab­ble-rousers and sent to sit before the vin­dic­tive reac­tionary Judge Julius Hoff­man (Frank Lan­gel­la) and answer for the chaos at the DNC. We are con­stant­ly remind­ed that ​“the world is watch­ing,” as the tri­al bal­loons into a ref­er­en­dum on the right to protest. Through an assort­ment of mouth­pieces – the mis­charged Black Pan­ther leader Bob­by Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), the fel­lows’ lawyer William Kun­stler (Mark Rylance), Abbie and Tom – Sorkin makes his case for pro­duc­tive dis­obe­di­ence, and an often com­pelling one it is.

And yet this mes­sage gets some­what dimin­ished, as does the excite­ment of this high-wire judi­cial process, by the Sorkin­ian fond­ness for lib­er­al con­grat­u­la­tion. Bob­by Seale gets lit­tle to do aside from demand the lawyer he deserves and mod­el heinous suf­fer­ing in one shock­ing scene. But the white lawyers get a round-of-applause moment when they valiant­ly call out the judge’s racism, and the tri­umphant finale goes to Tom when he uses his clos­ing state­ment to pay homage to sol­diers fall­en dur­ing the span of the trial.

The swells of orches­tral music noti­fy us how much what they’re doing mat­ters, and tac­it­ly places Sorkin in line with their efforts. It’s as both­er­some as any of Sorkin’s oth­er bad habits, such as his con­tin­ued inabil­i­ty to write female char­ac­ters, but it’s con­tained to a slim sec­tion of the drama.

Hoff­man and Rubin, grand­stand­ing pranksters they are, under­stand that spec­ta­cle can be a handy ves­sel for pol­i­tics. Sorkin attempts the same, and while he’s in a league of his own on the first part of the equa­tion, he’s still blink­ered and selec­tive about the sec­ond. His most urgent state­ment boils down to ​“can’t we all just get along?” At this point, there’s no use for that anymore.