trial of chicago 7 movie review

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“The whole world is watching!” This iconic chant from the protest movement of the ‘60s is featured multiple times in Aaron Sorkin ’s “The Trial of the Chicago 7.” The timing of the film's release as laws against protest movements in the United States gain traction and one of the most important elections in the country’s history looms on the horizon is not a coincidence. Sorkin and Netflix, where the film will premiere on October 16 th after a three-week limited theatrical run starting today, understand the timeliness of their project. It is meant to spark conversation about how far we’ve come since the riots of 1968 and subsequent trial in Chicago of the men accused of conspiring to provoke violence in the streets. And it is an accomplished ensemble piece, thick with great performances pushing for space in the same frame. The weight of the subject matter combined with the intensity of the acting here will be more than enough for some people, and I expect a few awards-giving bodies, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it all felt a little too refined and manufactured. That Sorkin sense that everyone knows exactly what to say and do in any given situation, even as they express doubt with perfect diction and vocabulary, fits perfectly for a story like the invention of Facebook in “ The Social Network ” or even the birth of Apple in " Steve Jobs ," but the protest movement and the government’s attempt to quell it should be more organic than this film ever even flirts with being. It looks and sounds great, but should it?

Sorkin wastes no time throwing viewers into the chaos of 1968, introducing viewers to the key players in what would become known as the trial of the Chicago 7 as they plan their trip to the Windy City to protest the Vietnam War during the Democratic National Convention. Tom Hayden ( Eddie Redmayne ) and Rennie Davis ( Alex Sharp ) encourage peaceful protests with an emphasis on the young lives being lost in an unjust war. Yippies Abbie Hoffman ( Sacha Baron Cohen ) and Jerry Rubin ( Jeremy Strong ) have a more chaotic approach to protest, arguing that dismantling the system only happens when it’s disrupted first. David Dellinger ( John Carroll Lynch ) is a family man who assures his wife and son that nothing dangerous will happen in Chicago, as Bobby Seale ( Yahya Abdul-Mateen II ) promises he too will be in and out without much fanfare.

Of course, everyone knows what happened in Chicago in 1968—chaos erupted multiple times, leading to riots that caught international attention. Sorkin starts his film months later, with an angry Attorney General John Mitchell ( John Doman ) tasking Richard Schultz ( Joseph Gordon-Levitt ) and Thomas Foran (J.C. MacKenzie) with the case of their lives, trying the men he believes were responsible for the unrest. The power has shifted from LBJ and AG Ramsey Clark ( Michael Keaton ) to Nixon and Mitchell, and they want to use Hoffman, Hayden, and the rest as examples of what will happen to those who protest the war. Mark Rylance plays the main attorney for the seven, William Kunstler, and Frank Langella is phenomenal as Judge Julius Hoffman, a man who teeters on that dangerous edge between incompetent and evil.

Clearly, this is a powerhouse cast, and they all relish the opportunity to chew on Sorkin’s timely and provocative language. There’s really not a weak link in terms of performance, and several of them shine in unexpected ways. Strong finds a winning vulnerability in Jerry Rubin; Rylance nails Kunstler’s increasing exasperation at a broken system; Mateen II’s simmering rage at even being dragged through the process is palpable; Redmayne finds the right key for Hayden’s righteous intellectualism; Keaton is perfect in only two scenes. There are such wonderful individual moments and beats in “The Trial of the Chicago 7” that just watching it as an acting exercise makes it worthwhile.

It’s when one considers the overall picture that things get a little hazy. The problems stem from Sorkin the director, not Sorkin the writer. Perhaps because of the importance he places on a script he’s been developing over a decade and has even more weight with the increased protest movement in 2020, Sorkin gets too precious with his characters and dialogue. It’s too polished—there’s no dirt under any fingernails, even Jerry and Abbie’s. Even a place that self-identifies as the Conspiracy House feels like a perfectly-lit set. These men were facing actual prison time and they very clearly understood their role in history, protest, and even public opinion of the Vietnam War, all during such a messy and uncertain era. But the stakes feel minimized here for that sheen Sorkin does so well, and it doesn't have the emotional impact it should. A different director might have allowed the story to breathe outside of the razor-sharp dialogue and might have reined Sorkin in on some of the overwrought theatrics of the final act.

Still, there’s much to admire in individual beats of “The Trial of the Chicago 7.” I never would've guessed how much I would enjoy a hippie buddy comedy starring Sacha Baron Cohen and Jeremy Strong. Mark Rylance proves again why he’s one of our best—he’s the standout of the ensemble when it comes to making Sorkin’s dialogue sound like it’s actually being thought of just before it’s spoken. Frank Langella perfectly captures how dangerous it can be when incompetent men hold an amount of power that they’re incapable of really comprehending (read into 2020 politics what you will). All of these elements and more make “The Trial of the Chicago 7” into an engaging drama, but one that could have been as impactful as that unforgettable chant if it was more willing to embrace imperfection. The whole world may be watching, but what are they going to feel when they do?

Now playing in select theaters; available on Netflix on October 16.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)

Rated R for language throughout, some violence, bloody images and drug use.

129 minutes

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Bobby Seale

Sacha Baron Cohen as Abbie Hoffman

Danny Flaherty as John Froines

Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Richard Schultz

Michael Keaton as Ramsey Clark

Frank Langella as Julius Hoffman

John Carroll Lynch as John Dellinger

Eddie Redmayne as Tom Hayden

Noah Robbins as Lee Weiner

Mark Rylance as William Kunstler

Alex Sharp as Rennie Davis

Jeremy Strong as Jerry Rubin

J.C. MacKenzie as Thomas Foran

• Aaron Sorkin

Cinematographer

• Phedon Papamichael
• Alan Baumgarten
• Daniel Pemberton

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‘the trial of the chicago 7’: film review.

Aaron Sorkin directs a starry ensemble that includes Sacha Baron Cohen, Yahya Abdul Mateen II, Mark Rylance and Eddie Redmayne in 'The Trial of the Chicago 7,' his account of the legal travesty sparked by the 1968 Democratic National Convention protest.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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Throughout his career writing for film, television and the stage, from The West Wing , Charlie Wilson’s War and The Newsroom to A Few Good Men and To Kill a Mockingbird , Aaron Sorkin has shown a consuming fascination with the trembling institutions of American politics and justice. His powerful and timely second feature as writer-director, The Trial of the Chicago 7 , shows Sorkin in his sweet spot, burrowing with needling curiosity, impassioned indignation and juicy oratory into the infamous six-month courtroom circus stemming from charges of inciting a riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

The Netflix feature — acquired from Paramount and opening in select theaters Sept. 25 ahead of its Oct. 16 bow on the streaming platform — has traveled a long road to the screen. Sorkin’s script originally was intended for Steven Spielberg, but the 2007 WGA strike caused the project to be suspended and the original director to move on to other commitments. Paul Greengrass and Ben Stiller were both rumored as possible replacements until Sorkin was encouraged by Spielberg to direct it himself, having gotten his feet wet in that role in 2018 with Molly’s Game .

Release date: Sep 25, 2020

That film was a mixed bag, its crackling writing and sharp performances undercut by its windy excesses and cumbersome flashback structure. Those flaws have been conquered here in a movie that’s as dense with witty dialogue, significant characters, factoids, time shifts and multiperspectivity as anything Sorkin has written. But it avoids the qualities often perceived as flaws by his critics, namely the tendency toward unwieldy exposition and soapbox grandiloquence, the latter remarkably so given the courtroom setting.

The Chicago Seven chapter has inspired numerous films, from Haskell Wexler’s docu-fiction treatment of the DNC protests, Medium Cool , through Woody Allen’s satirical take on the trial in Bananas , to Brett Morgen’s mix of archival footage with animated scenes based on court transcripts, Chicago 10 . Sorkin comes closer to the approach of documentaries spawned by the case, cogently dramatizing events in and around the trail in a fluid back and forth structure that gradually pieces together what went down in Chicago’s Grant Park on the night of Aug. 28, 1968.

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The long journey and intense urgency of aaron sorkin's 'the trial of the chicago 7'.

As has often proven the case with films grounded in history during this turbulent year, events of a half-century ago have an uncanny way of reflecting the bitterly polarized America of today, as neoconservative power plays grow ever more aggressive.

Just witnessing Chicago cops remove their badges and name tags as tensions mount in a clash with protestors sends chills down the spine. The very basis of the court case, which is stacked against the protest groups while evidence points to police as the antagonists escalating the violence, has stinging relevance given the unrest that has shaken the country in recent months. Tear gas, riot clubs and militarized federal troops have given 2020 an uneasy resemblance to 1968. And the manipulation of specious conspiracy charges has horrifying reverberations in the age of QAnon.

With the Trump administration now itching to fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat on the Supreme Court — likely removing any semblance of balance from the highest juridical body in the land — the spectacle of a biased, authoritarian judge who has made up his mind about the defendants before the trial even gets under way is sobering food for thought. That high-handed jurist, Judge Julius Hoffman, is played by Frank Langella with a mix of glacial authority and doddery belligerence in one of the superlative ensemble’s many incisive characterizations.

Sorkin and spry editor Alan Baumgarten establish the historical timeline leading up to the protest and the principal players involved in a terrific, 7-minute pre-title sequence interweaving news footage with new material. President Johnson had increased U.S. troops in Vietnam from 75,000 to 125,000, doubling the monthly draft call to 35,000. Fear and outrage were heightened in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy’s assassinations, and liberal Americans were incensed by the mass killing of innocent Vietnamese with napalm drops.

The Democratic presidential nominee, Hubert Humphrey, was considered too close to his Republican opponent, Richard Nixon, in his positions on Vietnam, so multiple activist groups mobilized to stage what was intended as a peaceful demonstration in Chicago during the DNC. They included Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), led by Tom Hayden ( Eddie Redmayne ) and Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp); the Youth International Party, or “Yippies,” fronted by Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron-Cohen) and Jerry Rubin ( Jeremy Strong ); and David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch), the scoutmaster pacifist head of the National Mobilization to End the Vietnam War, aka The Mobe.

Two peripheral figures, Lee Weiner (Noah Robbins) and John Froines (Danny Flaherty), were also among those put on trial as a result of the violence that night. They have no idea how they made the cut but Weiner observes amusingly on their first day in court, “This is the Academy Awards of protests, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s an honor just to be nominated.”

The original eighth defendant was Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), national chairman of the Black Panther Party, despite his having been in Chicago for only a brief period that night: “I made a speech, had a chicken pot pie and flew back to Oakland.”

Sorkin’s script hits knowingly on raw nerves with his insights into how the Panthers were exploited in the trial, putting a Black man among the defendants to scare the jury. No sooner are two of the jurors identified by the defense as potentially on their side do their families receive threatening letters signed by the Panthers, despite this being inconsistent with the organization’s M.O. The murder during the trial of Chicago chapter Panthers chairman Fred Hampton (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) sends shock waves, and for audiences unaware of the shameful way in which Seale was treated by Judge Hoffman, the brutal scenes leading to the declaration of a mistrial in his case will be gut-wrenching eye-openers.

'The Trial of the Chicago 7' Trailer: Aaron Sorkin's Courtroom Drama Re-Creates Riots at 1968 DNC Riots and the Aftermath

At a time when Attorney General William Barr perverts justice almost on a daily basis, Sorkin gets under our skin early on by presenting Nixon’s AG, John Mitchell (John Doman), as a hardass bulldog. He’s on a personal crusade against “the school boys,” as he calls the students pushing for social change. But he’s even more driven by a vendetta against his predecessor in the job, Ramsey Clark ( Michael Keaton , making the most of a brief appearance), a Civil Rights proponent who declined to press charges against the protesters.

When young prosecuting attorney Richard Schultz ( Joseph Gordon-Levitt ) is summoned to Mitchell’s office to take the case, he makes his reservations clear. The AG wants the protesters tried under the Rap Brown Law, an anti-riot act passed by Southern whites in Congress to limit the free speech of Black activists by clamping down on agitators acting outside their own communities. Schultz, who is bright and ambitious but also ethical, points out that witnesses say police, not protesters, started the violence. “And you’ll dismantle them, and you’ll win,” Mitchell snarls back.

On the other side is defense attorney William Kunstler ( Mark Rylance in peerless form), assisted by Leonard Weinglass (Ben Shenkman). They spend much of the early weeks of the trial mediating among the discordant personalities of their defendants, most of all Seale, whose lawyer is in hospital and who is denied the right to represent himself by Judge Hoffman.

Watchmen breakout Abdul-Mateen II brings tremendous coiled anger to his scenes, as does Harrison as Hampton, who inflames the punctilious Judge by whispering legal counsel in Seale’s ear. Their disappearance from the movie at midpoint might have left a dip in the energy had Sorkin not been so skillful at turning up the temperature around the other characters to compensate. The friction between Kunstler and Judge Hoffman, in particular, yields thrilling moments of fireworks for Rylance and Langella.

Toronto: Aaron Sorkin Says 'The Trial of the Chicago 7' Could Have Been a Musical

But the focus increasingly closes in on the initially begrudging respect between Hayden (who was still alive and served as an advisor while Sorkin was researching the script) and Abbie Hoffman, two men with vastly different approaches to a common goal.

The former is serious to a fault, as is his nerdy sidekick Davis, busy keeping a daily tally of American deaths in Vietnam during the trial. Tom, who maintains a respectful attitude throughout the trial, dismisses Abbie and Jerry as attention-seeking countercultural court jesters, and Baron Cohen brings a livewire touch of the standup comic to Hoffman’s irreverent addresses to crowds of college kids. Redmayne injects stirring gravitas into Tom’s ultimate recognition that behind Abbie’s provocation lies unshakeable courage and commitment.

Much of the film’s sly humor comes from the double-act of Baron Cohen and Strong, which flirts playfully with shtick while remaining tethered to the legitimacy of their dissent. And Strong gives Jerry a touching puppy-dog innocence and vulnerability as he gets taken in by an FBI plant (Caitlin Fitzgerald) who dangles romance while gathering information.

There are strong moments from all the principals, but Redmayne gets the rousing final words. While Sorkin arguably pushes a tad hard in that scene with the soaring notes of Daniel Pemberton’s score, the forceful emotional impact is undeniable, especially coming so soon after scenes filling in the final pieces of the night of the riots. DP Phedon Papamichael’s gritty images of those volatile moments on the street and in the park, intercut with archival footage, pack a wallop.

Sorkin has made a movie that’s gripping, illuminating and trenchant, as erudite as his best work and always grounded first and foremost in story and character. It’s as much about the constitutional American right to protest as it is about justice, which makes it incredibly relevant to where we are today, and to what’s at stake in the coming election. The final note of defiance here offers a glimmer of hope for which many of us are starved right now. I’ll take it.

Production company: Marc Platt Productions, DreamWorks Pictures, in association with Shivhans Pictures Distributor: Netflix Cast: Y ahya 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, C.J. Wilson Director-screenwriter: Aaron Sorkin Producers: Marc Platt. Stuart Besser, Matt Jackson, Tyler Thompson Executive producer: Walter Parkes, Laurie MacDonald, Marc Butan, Anthony Katagas, James Rodenhouse, Nia Vazirani, Kristie Macosko Krieger, Lauren Lohman, Thorsten Schumacher, Shivani Rawat, Slava Vladimirov, Monica Levinson, Jared Underwood, Ryan Smith, Andrew Robinson, Nicole Shipley, Jan McAdoo, Steve Matzkin, Maurice Fadida, Sarah Schroeder-Matzkin Director of photography: Phedon Papamichael Production designer: Shane Valentino Costume designer: Susan Lyall Music: Daniel Pemberton Editor: Alan Baumgarten Casting: Francine Maisler Rated R, 129 minutes

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‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’ Review: Aaron Sorkin’s Counterculture Docudrama Is a Knockout — the Rare Profound Movie About the 1960s

Sacha Baron Cohen and Eddie Redmayne lead a superb ensemble in a dramatization of the infamous circus of a '60s conspiracy trial, which Sorkin makes as charged and relevant today as it was then.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

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It’s a curious thing that in the movie culture of the last 50 years, you can count on one hand (or maybe one middle finger) the good dramas that have been made about the political counterculture of the 1960s. The turbulence of that era has never stopped casting a shadow over our own. Yet there’s something about it that resists being captured with any real onscreen authenticity. When you gather up a bunch of actors and dress them like hippies and have them carry protest signs, it tends to look like what it is: a staged insurrection. And the ’60s were such an amped orgy of media signifiers — the flower-power fashion, the groovys and hey, mans , the rock psychedelia, the jabbering on about revolution — that the era, viewed in hindsight, has a way of devolving into a compost heap of clichés.

Yet Aaron Sorkin ’s “ The Trial of the Chicago 7 ” is the rare drama about the 1960s that’s powerful and authentic and moving enough to feel as if it were taking place today. Sorkin doesn’t just re-stage the infamous trial, in which a motley crew of anti-war leaders were charged with plotting to stir up violence at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968. He jumps into the trial, goes outside the trial, cuts back to the demonstrations, and leads us into the combustible clash of personalities that was going on behind the scenes — the way, for instance, that the Yippie ringleader Abbie Hoffman ( Sacha Baron Cohen ), with his viper’s grin and showbiz-ready revolution-for-the-hell-of-it bravura, and Tom Hayden ( Eddie Redmayne ), the buttoned-down, furrowed-brow cofounder of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), neither like nor trust one another, in part because they have a deep rift: Do you work to change the system from within, or jolt the system with shock therapy? (The movie’s answer is: both.)

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Sorkin has a flowingly combative love for words, for drama that’s charged with competing notions of what’s right. He wants to hash it all out, to let the animating passions of the ’60s make their case — in court, but also out of court, among the people who fought the establishment and were still fighting amongst themselves about what they believed in. As a docudrama, “The Trial of the Chicago 7” is layered and enthralling, and it adds up to something that could scarcely be more relevant: a salute to what political freedom in America really means, and a vision of how the forces who line up to squash it tend to be scoundrels who try to look like patriots.

The Chicago 7 trial, which began on Sept. 24, 1969, and lasted for close to six months, was one of the signature events of the ’60s, and it was a theater of the absurd — a mythological made-for-reality-TV showdown between the rude, shaggy, say-what-you-feel radical left and the uptight, controlling forces of the straitlaced American mainstream.

The defendants, on trial for “conspiracy” (a thinly based charge that, in this case, was less legal crime than metaphor), looked as out-of-place as the Grateful Dead at a meeting of the Chamber of Commerce. Abbie Hoffman mouthed off in court like a stand-up comedian — he was Lenny Bruce gone Dada in a headband. And the judge, Julius Hoffman, who was born in 1895 (the fact that he had the same last name as the Yippie leader only added to the weird Oedipal warfare of it all), kept charging the defendants and their lead attorney, William Kunstler, with contempt of court when, in fact, it was clear that he had contempt for them — overruling every objection, suppressing key testimony, getting the same names wrong over and over again, putting his fear and loathing of the defendants right out there. He took their worst paranoia about the American criminal-justice system and made it come true.

The Chicago 7 trial was a circus, an outsize burlesque of a trial, yet it was also a deeply serious battle over who can say what — and how — in America. And that’s the level of import that Sorkin keys into. Early on, John Mitchell (John Doman), the U.S. attorney general under Nixon, summons Richard Schultz (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Thomas Foran (J.C. Mackenzie), the ’50s-straight-arrow prosecutors he has chosen to handle to case, to his office, and tells them that a Justice Department investigation concluded that the Chicago demonstrations violated no federal law. (As we later learn, the investigation laid the blame for the chaos in the streets squarely on Mayor Richard Daley’s Chicago police force.) But he wants the defendants convicted anyway! In other words: This is a show trial — or, as Abbie Hoffman puts it, a political trial.

That’s why Abbie, on day one, disrupts the proceedings, speaking out of turn, winning laughs from the spectators — but when the defendants meet up afterward (they’re free on bail), Tom Hayden reminds them that if they keep up the antics they could all go to prison. Hayden accuses Abbie of secretly wanting to keep the Vietnam War going. That’s how much of a showboater he thinks Abbie is.

Abbie is there with his Yippie colleague, the shaggy-bearded Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong), who drops sharp observations in a stoned voice, and Hayden has his SDS cohort, Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp), a brainy geek in oxford shirts and glasses. This pair of duos, one hip and one square, are the yin and yang of the new youth culture. The other main defendant, David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch), who’s in his mid-50s, is a lifelong peacenik who was a conscientious objector during World War II, and he looks like the mild-mannered Boy Scout troop leader he is. Making up the rest of the seven are Lee Weiner (Noah Robbins) and John Froines (Danny Flaherty), who have no idea what they’re doing there, and neither do we.

And then there’s Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II). He’s the National Chairman of the Black Panther Party, and he came to Chicago during the convention to give a speech, then left a few hours later. He’s not really part of the Chicago 7 (he had no part in organizing the protests), but the prosecutors have attached him to the case because they think a Black Panther will scare the jury.

Seale keeps arguing with Judge Hoffman because his lawyer is in the hospital, and he wants a postponement — or the chance to act as his own attorney. The judge will allow neither, and their battle over protocol, which is really about something deeper, escalates until Hoffman orders Seale to be bound and gagged in the middle of the courtroom. This was one of the most disgraceful episodes in American history, and to see it enacted here, as it emerges from the judge’s personal neurotic power game, has a calamitous force. It’s a barely concealed act of racial terrorism, one that graphically symbolizes what the entire trial hangs on: whether the truth can be spoken out loud.

Sorkin has structured “The Trial of the Chicago 7” ingeniously, so that it’s never about just one thing. It’s about the theatrical insanity of the war in the courtroom, about how the government would stop at nothing (including flagrant attempts at jury tampering), and about the politics, at once planned and spontaneous, of how the Chicago protests unfolded. It’s about Abbie doing stand-up riffs to college audiences, about the sneaky prevalence of FBI undercover agents, about how William Kunstler, played with masterful dour puckishness by Mark Rylance, combines the mind of a litigator with the heart of a grizzled rabbi, and about how Abbie and Tom circle each other with resentment, until they’re forced to confront each other in a great scene that seems to sketch in the next half century of American politics.

The performances are rich, avid, juicy, and, in several cases, memorable. Sacha Baron Cohen may be a head taller than the real Abbie Hoffman, but he catches the exuberance of Hoffman’s rascal Jewish charisma — the haughty Boston accent and fun-loving literacy, and the moral gravity that centered everything he said. Eddie Redmayne, pale with gravitas, makes Tom Hayden the slightly uptight soul of the New Left, and John Carroll Lynch, as Dellinger, has one of the most moving moments in the film when he lets down his pacifist guard and slugs a court official. A delectable actor I won’t name plays Ramsey Clarke, the previous (uncorrupt) attorney general, and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II invests Bobby Seale with an incendiary awareness of how a rotting legal system is out to railroad him.

In each case, maybe because I grew up with the Chicago 7 (they were my heroes in seventh grade), I rarely forgot that I was watching actors, but the 82-year-old Frank Langella, as Judge Hoffman, does something uncanny. With his shiny reptilian eyes and lordly scowl, he digs into this grumpy old man, full of bitter decorum, and makes him the embodiment of a world that will do anything to hold onto its power.

Which may remind you of something else. The trial, as Sorkin presents it, is really about the soul of America — the ability to protest, to question the most fundamental actions of the government. The overlap between the 1968 Chicago protests and the Black Lives Matter protests that have taken place this year is all too obvious. Yet the true parallel, I think, is that “The Trial of the Chicago 7” is really about what it looks like when a society starts to treat people speaking freely as if they were doing something dangerous. The movie reminds you, quite stirringly, that the Chicago 7 weren’t attacking America. They were upholding it.

Reviewed at Digital Arts, Sept.23, 2020. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 129 MIN.

• Production: A Netflix release of a Marc Platt/DreamWorks production, in association with Paramount Pictures, Cross Creek Pictures, Shivhans Pictures. Producers: Marc Platt, Stuart Besser, Matt Jackson, Tyler Thompson. Executive producers: Walter Parkes, Laurie MacDonald, Marc Butan, Anthony Katagas, James Rodenhouse, Nia Vazirani, Kristie Macosko Krieger, Lauren Lohman, Thorsten Schumacher, Slava Vladimirov, Jared Underwood, Andrew Robinson, Jan McAdoo, Maurice Fadida, Shivani Rawat, Monia Levinson, Ryan Smith, Nicole Shipley, Steve Matzkin, Sarah Schroeder-Matzkin.
• Crew: Director, screenplay: Aaron Sorkin. Camera: Phedon Papamichael. Editor: Alan Baumgarten. Music: Daniel Pemberton.
• With: Sacha Baron Cohen, Eddie Redmayne, Mark Rylance, Frank Langella, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Keaton, John Carroll Lynch, Jeremy Strong, Alex Sharp, Noah Robbins, Danny Flaherty, Ben Shenkman, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Caitlin Fitzgerald, John Doman, J.C. Mackenzie.

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The Trial of the Chicago 7 Reviews

The Trial of the Chicago 7 is Aaron Sorkin at his finest, and I hope the next project he does has as much passion and heart in it as this does.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Apr 4, 2024

With such a compelling story and quick, sharp editing to match the screenplay, this is a worthy film for my top ten of the year.

Full Review | Mar 1, 2024

Mark Rylance proves to us why that surprise Oscar win was well deserved

Full Review | Aug 30, 2023

Sorkin strains to abbreviate that long arc of the moral universe, flexing it toward justice through the sheer force of sophistry and righteous indignation.

Full Review | Jul 26, 2023

Maintaining the focus on a single location is an exceptional decision for a movie where words are the action of the story. Inside the courtroom is where every fascinating argument ensues, never losing steam until the very end.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Jul 24, 2023

Sorkin had to navigate more than a handful of characters, yet somehow he managed to give each of them momentum. Even characters in supporting roles are nuanced and well-developed.

Full Review | Jul 20, 2023

The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a studious, accessible, intense courtroom drama that compares favorably to historically great courtroom dramas like To Kill a Mockingbird, 12 Angry Men, and Judgment at Nuremberg.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 6, 2022

Captures the exact spirit of the end of the hippie era. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Sep 20, 2022

If you find yourself on the idealistic end of the spectrum, The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a film that is made for the masses. It applies the classic Hollywood treatment to its worthy subject matter

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Sep 3, 2022

Sorkin writes a very white hat/black hat tale that leaves practically nothing for us to wrestle with. Still, he’s a good enough writer to energize the many characters and tell a mesmerizing story even if it’s only a subjective CliffsNotes version.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 27, 2022

It is good to see that the creator of the inimitable Borat and Ali G demonstrate that his range extends to characters who might melt into everyday society.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 22, 2022

While the term important film is overused, The Trial of the Chicago 7 is one of the years essential must-see films.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 18, 2022

Sorkin has tapped into something. Whether it's called Capraesque or Spielbergian, the label denotes a film that accesses our emotions and ideological sympathies in simple but undeniable ways.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 17, 2022

The Trial of the Chicago 7 might not be the most revolutionary film of the year when it comes to thesis, but its craft and basic effectiveness is undeniable.

Full Review | Feb 12, 2022

[A] spirited and very entertaining affair...

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 3, 2021

As an ensemble piece, the film is exceptional, and it laments Sorkin as an interesting director, who still has much to learn in terms of visual storytelling.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Aug 10, 2021

Seems rushed and too close to the heart of the filmmaker to be more grounded in living history than in personal sentiment, but it has Mark Rylance to hold that balance.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 31, 2021

Sorkin uses this reminder for building an emotionally laden finale, one whose essence remains solid - a truth that advises remembering the past and trying to learn from it...

Full Review | Jul 19, 2021

The Trial Of The Chicago 7 gets off to a slow start but it sucked me in and I was fixated by the end of the two-hour runtime.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 29, 2021

Although the film has certain narrative missteps, especially when conducting different actions in parallel, these are compensated by the usual bursts of brilliant made-in-Sorkin dialogue and by its forceful plot effects. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 14, 2021

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The trial of the chicago 7 review: an entertaining & timely drama.

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Aaron Sorkin first wrote  The Trial of the Chicago 7 back in 2007, but it took a number of years for the project to finally see the light of day. After passing through multiple directors like Steven Spielberg and Paul Greengrass,  The Trial of the Chicago 7 gained traction in 2018 when Sorkin signed on as helmsman, recruiting a star-studded ensemble to bring the truth-based story to life. Due to the talent on both sides of the camera,  The Trial of the Chicago 7 was already one of 2020's most-anticipated awards contenders, but there's even more interest now because of the story's parallels to modern times. Fortunately, the film lives up to the hype.  The Trial of the Chicago 7 makes for an entertaining and compelling courtroom drama, bolstered by Sorkin's script and strong performances.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 is primarily set in the aftermath of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, site of riots and protests against America's involvement in the Vietnam War. Seven individuals - Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne), Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen), Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong), David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch), Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp), John Froines (Danny Flaherty), and Lee Weiner (Noah Robbins) - are charged with conspiracy to cross state lines and incite violence during the convention. With lawyer William Kunstler (Mark Rylance) leading the defense against prosecuting team Thomas Foran (J.C. MacKenzie) and Richard Schultz (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), what ensues is a grueling and infamous trial where the Chicago 7 look to stand up for their values in a system working against them.

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Unsurprisingly, one of  The Trial of the Chicago 7's greatest assets is the screenplay. Sorkin's characteristically lively dialogue flies off the page as actors verbally spar with each other, making it easy for viewers to get drawn into the narrative. A veteran of the courtroom drama genre (most notably with  A Few Good Men ), Sorkin feels right at home with this politically-charged material, striking the proper balance between pure entertainment and the seriousness of the subject matter. While some members of the titular Chicago 7 have more fleshed out parts than others, Sorkin does a good job to give each actor in the crowded ensemble an opportunity to shine, effectively giving audiences an idea of who each person is as an individual. Each member of the Chicago 7 have their unique traits that make them stand out, making them well-rounded as characters.

Sorkin's terrific script might have been for naught if the cast wasn't up for the challenge, but they are. Due to the ensemble nature of the film, it's difficult to peg one or two actors as the undisputed stars, but Redmayne and Cohen arguably have the meatiest roles among the seven. Their characters represent two contrasting ideologies on the left (the latter is a hippie leader while the former has more "respect" for authority), making for a fascinating dynamic that ultimately has a nice payoff. Strong also makes a memorable impression, essentially serving as the movie's comic relief with his great chemistry with Cohen. Another standout in the cast is Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, who plays Bobby Seale, an eighth member of the group who was on trial. His subplot definitely has undertones that will ring true to today's audiences, sadly highlighting how little things have changed in the country over the past handful of decades.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 is Sorkin's second directorial effort following 2017's  Molly's Game , and while his screenwriting is still the bigger attraction, he does a good job behind the camera here. The film doesn't boast a particularly flashy visual style, but that's perhaps for the best, since it allows viewers to focus solely on the characters' plights and their interactions without being distracted. Sorkin's filmmaking never calls attention to itself, and he lets his dialogue and the themes do all the talking. And though the movie was conceived well before America endured a turbulent 2020, it's easy to see Sorkin draw parallels between  The Trial of the Chicago 7 and what's happening today. This makes the film more than just an historical drama; it's a timely and important piece. Sorkin is able to avoid getting too preachy in his messaging, but it's clear what he's trying to say.

In a year that's had a dearth of notable new releases,  The Trial of the Chicago 7 definitely ranks among one of 2020's best offerings, and it wouldn't be surprising to see it be in contention for multiple accolades. Sorkin once again has delivered a dynamic script, and he's continuing to prove himself as a capable director.  The Trial of the Chicago 7 is also a bonafide actor's showcase, and anyone who's a fan of Sorkin's previous work or any of the talent involved will surely find something to enjoy here. Netflix has a number of prestigious titles on their plate this year, and  The Trial of the Chicago 7 is one of their best.

More: The Trial of the Chicago 7 Official Trailer

The Trial of the Chicago 7  starts streaming on Netflix on October 16. It runs 129 minutes and is rated R for language throughout, some violence, bloody images, and drug use.

Let us know what you thought of the film in the comments!

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Aaron Sorkin goes big and busy in true-life political drama The Trial of the Chicago 7 : Review

There are certain things the words "written and directed by Aaron Sorkin " almost seem to guarantee: Will there be a few good men, and some very bad ones too? Will it be talky and timely and speak (and speak and speak) truth to power? The Trial of the Chicago 7 (on Netflix Oct. 16) delivers exactly that sort of Sorkin-us maximus, in both the best and worst sense — a remarkably relevant story, smartly told, but with certain blind spots and pitfalls: broad strokes, rhetorical grandstanding, the tendency to overstuff an already load-bearing tale.

As a history lesson too, it plays more than a little fast and loose. But the basic, outrageous facts are there: Thousands of protesters against the war in Vietnam, many of them drafting age, flocked to the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where violent clashes with local police ensued. In the wake of Richard Nixon's election, the new attorney general singled out eight figureheads for felony charges that included incitement to riot and conspiracy across state lines.

The Department of Justice's cynical take was that they were all colluding, a grand scheme nearly every one of the defendants rejected out of hand. And it's not hard to see why: Tom Hayden ( Eddie Redmayne ) and Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp) were clean-cut college boys, avatars of polite middle-class outrage in slacks and skinny ties; Abbie Hoffman ( Sacha Baron Cohen ) and Jerry Rubin ( Jeremy Strong ) were the wild, woolly Yippies, bringing happy chaos to the streets. David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch) was a middle-aged suburban pacifist, and Bobby Seale ( Yahya Abdul-Mateen II ) the already-incendiary head of the Black Panthers; a pair of lesser-known activists and academics, John Froines and Lee Weiner brought up the rear.

Not unkindly, the movie consigns those last two almost immediately to a sort of glorified peanut gallery. Though that is still, you may have noted, one too many for the title — for good reason; from the start, Seale moved to sever his case, adamant that his few hours of speechifying in Chicago had no connection or bearing on his codefendants, an assertion with which their own lawyer ( Mark Rylance ) fervently agreed. But it's clear on day one where the sympathies of the presiding judge, Julius Hoffman ( Frank Langella ) lie: with a ginned-up prosecution led by Joseph Gordon-Levitt 's Richard Schlutz, a young DOJ lawyer who doesn't just look like a grown Boy Scout; his personal code of honor may prove too rarified for the case he's been asked to try.

Sorkin sets all this up with a sort of sweeping "hey, man, the '60s " exposition, which still leaves him nearly two hours to weave in and out of the courtroom — tracing a trial whose polarizing cause and outrageous antics on both sides became a cultural flashpoint, amplified daily by the gathered hordes of media and impassioned bystanders. A bewigged and beaded Cohen is wolfishly great as the merry prankster with a more serious conviction at his core; Strong, far from his Succession role, leans in as his shaggy foil, a sort of sweetly stoned muppet with eyes perpetually at half-mast.

Langella conjures an ideal vessel of the evil Establishment, both doddering and shrewd, and other excellent players come and go, including Michael Keaton as the steely former AG and Kelvin Harrison Jr. as famed Panther Fred Hampton. It's Rylance and Abdul-Mateen, though, who pierce the comfortable rhythms of the narrative, their fierce conviction cutting through what can sometimes feel — with its busy stream of characters and clattering pace — less like a film than a sort of deluxe television event.

The script saves some of its most fiery material for them, the kind of thunderbolt Sorkin-isms that land with a satisfying crack. Though it allows them to inhabit quieter moments, too, and the movie is at its best when it roots itself in the real consequences of the case — not only for the men involved, but for a nation increasingly unable to bridge its most painful divides. In that, Chicago 7 frames the past not just as entertaining prologue but a living document; one we ignore at our own peril. B

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‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’ Review: Sacha Baron Cohen Transforms Sorkin’s Old-School Courtroom Drama

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Nothing epitomized late ’60s iconoclasm like the trial of the Chicago Seven, a high-profile courtroom showdown between vindictive government forces and the righteous men who opposed its corruption. The nearly five-month proceedings were so loaded with histrionic grandstanding they practically anticipated the movie Aaron Sorkin would make five decades later. “ The Trial of the Chicago 7 ” is exactly as advertised — a giant, giddy burst of earnest theatricality, loaded with a formidable ensemble that chews on every inch of the scenery, that overall makes a passionate case for the resilience of its formula more than using it as an excuse.

Of course, Sorkin practically rejuvenated that formula by writing the fiery confrontations of “A Few Good Men” almost 30 years ago, and here directs his own blunt, energetic screenplay with the convictions of a storyteller fully committed to the tropes at hand. It works well enough in part because the trial lends itself to such artifice: When the government charged an eclectic blend of stoned rebels and non-violent anti-war protesters with inciting riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the resulting charade bordered on performance art. So of course the ultimate actor-as-performance-artist, Sacha Baron Cohen, steals the show and transforms an otherwise stagey period piece into something far more compelling.

As frizzy-haired Yippie icon Abbie Hoffman, the British prankster buries himself in a role both convincing and self-aware, managing a delicate balance far better than the unsubtle narrative around him. Hoffman and Yippie co-founder Jerry Rubin (a hilarious Jeremy Strong) knew they were screwed from the outset, and decided to play the room for laughs, so Sorkin takes the original courtroom transcripts and runs wild. While his script reduces all of the chief characters to archetypes, Cohen justifies that outcome. After all, Hoffman was basically a homegrown caricature who used cartoonish bluster to obscure his intellect, much as Cohen himself has done across a career built on sardonic winks.

But he’s hardly the only centerpiece in this Fantasy Football League of a mouth-watering cast. From Frank Langella as petulant Judge Julius Hoffman (a bit much) to Joseph Gordon-Levitt as morally-conflicted assistant prosecutor Richard Schultz (solid) and a crafty Mark Rylance as heroic defense attorney William Kunstler (charming), “Chicago 7” stacks the deck with so much obvious awards bait that Sorkin can’t help but acknowledge it in the opening minutes: “This is the Academy Awards of protests,” says Lee Weiner (Noah Robbins), one of the less visible of the charged, as he settles into his seat. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s an honor just to be nominated.”

As the reigning maestro of judicial face-offs, Sorkin knows the name of this game, and plays it like a pro. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Steven Spielberg originally wanted to direct such an obvious crowdpleaser with real-world resonance — he made up for that missed opportunity with “The Post” — but Sorkin is alive to its potential, settling into material that fits his garrulous writing style far better than his meandering first effort “Molly’s Game” ever could. “The Trial of the Chicago 7” isn’t a deep-dive into the Chicago 7 drama, nor even particularly deep in its sociopolitical critique. With its blaring score and breathless chatter about miscarriages of justice, the pace is downright algorithmic. But if you’re going to make an old-school courtroom drama with decades of precedent behind you, there are few more effective vessels.

Still, nothing in “Chicago 7” can top the brilliance of its opening number, a slick montage that introduces its eponymous activists-turned-martyrs through a smorgasbord of Sorkinesque fizz. A hodgepodge of archival material careens from LBJ’s update on the Vietnam draft to the assassination of MLK, as Sorkin launches into the overlapping plans of the future defenders: There’s the measured leaders of the Students for a Democratic Society, Tom Hayden (a pensive Eddie Redmayne) and Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp), the zany Hoffman and Rubin firing up their crowd, levelheaded family man David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch), who ran the the Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam, and Black Panther Party national chairman Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), who sped through Chicago for four hours but still wound up lumped into the trumped-up charges as a co-defendant. Weiner and John Froines (Daniel Flaherty) were tossed in for good measure.

Sorkin speeds through the rest of the setup — Rubin’s got homemade bombs, Hayden and Dellinger declare their peaceful intent, and the authorities label them all as revolutionary loons — then dives straight into Season 2: The police attacked protestors in a series of violent outbursts, and the Department of Justice found some scapegoats. Endowed with a vivid sense of purpose from start to finish, “Chicago 7” also operates as a nifty explainer for newcomers to the case at hand. The defendants were charged through a loophole in the anti-riot provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, of all things, a decision that one official shrugs off with explicit irony as only Sorkin could write it: “It doesn’t matter why it was passed. It matters what it can do .”

So begins a boisterous trial that consumes the next two hours, with ample flashbacks to fill in the gaps. Sorkin’s script is both economical and verbose, flitting between courtroom frustrations, anxious strategy sessions, and lively snippets of the Chicago events themselves. For every burst of zealous speech-mongering, there’s another endearing zinger from Hoffman — who has fun with the confusion over sharing a surname with the judge — or a taut montage revisiting the Chicago chaos in question. The movie moves too fast to linger on its rough patches. In lesser hands, the abrupt cameo by an irascible Michael Keaton as former Attorney General Ramsey Clark might register as little more than a flimsy gimmick; for Sorkin, it’s an enjoyable extension of the starry framework that he embraces from the outset.

The most troubling sequence arrives with the judge’s decision to bound and gag Seale after he protested the absence of his lawyer, a sickening maneuver previously depicted in Brett Morgen’s 2007 animated documentary “Chicago 10: Speak Your Peace.” That order came in the aftermath of the police shooting of Fred Hampton (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), and the confluence of those events leads to its angriest confrontation. Years later, the racist charges that followed Seale — and the tragic fate that befell Hampton — beg for elaboration; as with the coverage of the case itself, it’s been relegated to a slim-but-potent sidebar here.

Sorkin plays it safe with this large-scale portrait of a trial that has many moving parts. The movie churns along with the didactic intensity of a  sweeping history lesson, pairing the most dramatic re-stagings of the protestors’ police encounters with black-and-white footage of the actual ordeal, as if to endow the rush of chaos with extra authority. It’s an inelegant approach, but finds its way to a suspenseful confrontation in the movie’s final stretch, as the protestors crash through the window of a posh bar filled with high-society types — “an unnecessary metaphor,” as Hoffman puts it — and form meets function right on cue. After years of toiling in a director’s medium, Sorkin finally becomes a filmmaker in his own right.

Nevertheless, “Chicago 7” is never better than when it lets the accused men sit with their lawyer outside the court, passing joints as they argue through their fate. Rylance, who has aged nicely into the “hip elder statesman” role, meshes nicely with the zaniness of the youth culture around him (the 2009 documentary “William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe” provides helpful context here). But it’s Cohen’s Hoffman — kooky and calculated all at once — who really elevates the movie whenever it starts to feel like a routine.

By the end, Sorkin can’t help but fall into the Spielbergian trappings of the material, right down to the gooey sentimentality of its final moments. Of course, there were no cameras in the courtroom, which allows for plenty of room for embellishment. Morgen’s “Chicago 10” documentary filled that gap with a rotoscoped cast (including an inspired Hank Azaria as Hoffman) and wielded more cinematic ambition when it came to representing the events at hand. Sorkin finds its built-in appeal: The earnest crescendo is almost quaint — all cheering crowds and orchestral swells  — but it’s hard to dismiss in a movie so invested in celebrating the democratic ideals of 50 years ago that it makes them seem just as relevant today. That’s obviously the point this galvanizing agitprop aims to drive home however it can. “We’re not guilty because of who we are,” Hoffman says. “We’re guilty of what we believe .” Preach!

Made by Paramount and tossed to Netflix in the pandemic uncertainty of 2020, “Chicago 7” isn’t exactly a groundbreaking vision, but it’s certainly a passion project of the “they don’t make ‘em like they used to” variety. It could have been made a few years after the Chicago 7 faced their fate and fit its moment, but registers as particularly robust now: Sorkin proves that courtrooms have always been at the mercy of a flawed process, yet subject to moral scrutiny at every turn. A look back at rabble-rousers from another era won’t change the world, but “Chicago 7” is a solid tribute to a few men who realized they could, even when the system they fought for came up short.

Netflix releases “The Trial of the Chicago 7” in limited theatrical release on September 25. It will be available on Netflix on October 16.

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Review: Aaron Sorkin goes full Aaron Sorkin in slickly entertaining ‘Trial of the Chicago 7’

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Demonstrators clashing with police. Black men violently silenced. A court battle waged by a vindictive administration. A fraught election year, a fast-climbing death toll, a nation in turmoil. These are a few of the things we see and hear in “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” Aaron Sorkin’s slick, garrulous new movie about the bloody chaos that erupted outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the trumped-up legal circus that followed. The echoes of our political present, booming at us from across half a century, are about as subtle as the shouts we hear during the protests and later on the courthouse: “The whole world is watching!” Indeed it was, as it is now.

I suppose that makes “The Trial of the Chicago 7” what you might call timely, a word that threatens to become meaningless with overuse — particularly in film discourse, where timeliness often functions as a glib signifier of importance, currency and presumed Oscar-worthiness. You may well chuckle when Lee Weiner (Noah Robbins), one of the eight anti-Vietnam War protestors indicted on charges of conspiracy to incite a riot, describes the 1968 clash as “the Academy Awards of protests, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s an honor just to be nominated.” He’s embellishing a quote attributed to another defendant, Jerry Rubin; he’s also referencing a much more frivolous media spectacle that some hope will be in the cards for this movie come 2021 .

But even if “The Trial of the Chicago 7” qualifies as catnip for Oscar voters — it’s a juicy courtroom drama, a sweeping ’60s panorama, an epic of liberal hand wringing and an all-you-can-eat actors’ buffet rolled into one — it also, to its credit, rarely exaggerates its own topicality. Sorkin, who wrote the script in 2007 (and eventually inherited the directing reins from Steven Spielberg), understands that the story being told here is never not timely. And he and his collaborators have applied their considerable skill to telling that story in as crisp, cogent and streamlined a fashion as possible and to let the present-day implications follow on their own.

Given the sprawling cast of characters and the juxtaposition of multiple time frames, the clarity of the result is bracing, and maybe also a bit deflating. One of the pleasures and shortcomings of this kind of Hollywood history lesson is that it seeks to impose a sense of order on events, movements and personalities that are by nature complicated and resistant to easy summary. Curiously, that narrative strategy subliminally mirrors the tactics of the prosecution, which contends — at the insistence of President Richard Nixon’s newly installed attorney general, John Mitchell (John Dolan) — that eight men deliberately masterminded and instigated the 1968 unrest. It’s a dubious allegation, privately doubted even by the lead prosecutor, Richard Schultz (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who notes that some of the defendants had never even met before crossing state lines into Illinois.

We meet them ourselves in a sleek opening montage that immediately casts doubt on the notion that these guys could have agreed on where to have lunch, let alone how to stage a revolution. In one corner are the Students for a Democratic Society leaders Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne) and Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp), who head to Chicago eager to show off the moral and political seriousness of a younger generation of activists. Thumbing their noses at seriousness, meanwhile, are Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen) and Rubin (Jeremy Strong), whose raucous Yippie spirit — why not protest a war and throw a massive free-love celebration in Grant Park? — will make them the undisputed celebrities of the whole debacle.

Despite their very different aims and methods, the men intend a peaceful protest. Their commitment to nonviolence is echoed by another defendant, the conscientious objector David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch), and upheld by two mild-mannered scapegoats, Weiner and John Froines (Daniel Flaherty), who have been indicted mainly to make the other defendants look worse. The worst-looking one of all, in the prosecution’s racist estimation, is Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), co-founder of the Black Panther Party, who’s so incensed at being dragged into the proceedings that he refuses to be represented by the defense’s hard-working attorneys, William Kunstler (an especially good Mark Rylance) and Leonard Weinglass (Ben Shenkman).

Seale, forcefully played by Abdul-Mateen, makes clear that he’s the defendant with the most to lose. He’s also the one most openly scornful of the judge, Julius Hoffman, whose glowering pettiness and bias against the defense couldn’t come through more clearly in Frank Langella’s supremely belligerent performance. Seale’s eventual mistrial — granted only after he is physically bound and gagged, in a horrifying re-enactment of the trial’s most troubling episode — accounts for how the Chicago Eight ultimately became the Chicago Seven, though the numbers have rarely been consistent. (The case was dramatized in HBO’s starry 1987 docudrama “Conspiracy: The Trial of the Chicago 8” and revisited in the 2007 semi-animated documentary “Chicago 10, ” which added Kunstler and Weinglass to the group’s ranks.)

Like those earlier films and other works that have attempted to make dramatic sense of this jaw-dropping story, “The Trial of the Chicago 7” is at pains to balance the showboating courtroom theatrics with a deeper consideration of context. Sorkin takes pains to establish the political-historical frenzy of the late ’60s, with early nods to the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, as well as the ever-rising number of American soldiers being sent to Vietnam. But he keeps the fallout at a tasteful, dramatically strategic remove. The tumultuous four-day convention itself is revisited in archival clips and scripted flashbacks, with a heavy assist from Alan Baumgarten’s agile editing and Daniel Pemberton’s suitably anguished score. But the full trauma of the riot itself, culminating in ghastly images of blue-helmeted cops assaulting protestors with nightsticks and tear gas, is only briefly allowed to break the movie’s meticulously well-argued surface.

Although Sorkin made a fine directing debut with 2017’s crackling “Molly’s Game,” it’s hard not to wonder if a different filmmaker might have productively shifted the balance here, perhaps by treating his dazzling words as the movie’s skeleton, not its star. But as was already clear from “A Few Good Men” and “The Social Network,” the legal drama has always been Sorkin’s sweet spot, the most natural fit for his pugilistic, process-oriented writing style. (The trial here needs little of his comic embellishment to descend into full-blown farce; some of the script’s funnier moments, including a verbal tussle between the two Hoffmans, emerge more or less intact from the court transcripts.) The result is an unsurprising feast of Sorkinese, full of insults and rebuttals, argumentation and oneupsmanship, and it’s never more satisfying than when Michael Keaton turns up in a beaut of a performance whose context I wouldn’t dream of giving away.

The courtroom’s behavioral divide — between the unruly, disruptive language of protest and the judge’s authoritarian insistence on civility and order — is shown to be an implicitly political one. Another version of it plays out between the two most adversarial defendants: Tom Hayden, brought to impassioned life by Redmayne, and Abbie Hoffman, whose streak of performative anarchy is such a natural fit for Cohen that it makes the actor’s restraint all the more gratifying. (He and Strong’s genially stoned-out Rubin make a crack comic duo.) Hayden wants to play by the rules and effect meaningful change within the system; Hoffman mocks the idea of decorum and seeks a more radical overhaul. Whether or not that strikes you as a nod to contemporary liberal-progressive animus, it’s one more reminder, as if we needed reminding, of just how frustrating the pursuit of solidarity can be.

“The Trial of the Chicago 7,” smoothly entertaining as it is, may also elude clear consensus. Democracy is a messy business, but an element of real, lived-in messiness seems beyond this movie’s purview. Everything runs like clockwork, even the requisite soul searching: Nearly every major character is forced to grapple with some inner weakness, some unexamined hypocrisy, and you can practically see their arcs snapping into place from the opening frames. The dialogue pops but rarely overlaps, the way it does in real life, because if it did, you wouldn’t be hearing the voice of Sorkin the screenwriter, with his perfectly engineered setups and comebacks. You might actually risk hearing the voices of the characters themselves.

‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’

Rated: R, for language throughout, some violence, bloody images and drug use Running time: 2 hours, 9 minutes Playing: Starts Sept. 25 in limited release where theaters are open; available Oct. 16 on Netflix

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Review: Aaron Sorkin's 'The Trial of the Chicago 7' packs its courtroom with stellar cast

Aaron Sorkin's  superb “The Trial of the Chicago 7” is a period piece for multiple periods: The drama takes place in the '60s, has the rousing flavor of a ‘90s popcorn thriller (like, say, the Sorkin-written  “A Few Good Men” ) and feels relevant and urgent in 2020.

Featuring a stellar cast, “Chicago 7” (★★★½ out of four; rated R; in select theaters Friday and streaming Oct. 16 on Netflix) takes audiences back to the tumultuous late ‘60s, when Vietnam and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were the cultural sparks that helped ignite a violent clash between Chicago police and protestors at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Written and directed by Sorkin in his inimitable style, the story fleshes out the characters blamed by the government for that bloody event and examines a period of rancor between the people and the state that reflects our own divided times.

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“The whole world is watching!” chants the crowd gathered in 1969 outside the courthouse where eight men – including “Yippies” Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen) and Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong), Democratic student activists Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne) and Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp), and Black Panther Party head Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) – are charged with conspiracy to incite a riot by President Richard Nixon’s new Justice Department. 

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Each character gets his own opening introduction, which is key to keeping them all straight when the obviously political trial begins – though there are ideological differences even among the defendants, as Tom and Abbie come to words often over the legal process. (Tom argues for capturing electoral power, while Abbie’s more of a revolutionary). Bobby, who was only in Chicago for four hours on the fateful day, insists he was a Black guy thrown in to “scare” the jury, and making matters worse is when Judge Julius Hoffman (a fantastic Frank Langella) won’t let Bobby represent himself when his lawyer is hospitalized.

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Sorkin’s second outing as director is a more confident and well-executed affair than his first, the solid “Molly’s Game,” and he’s interspersed real black-and-white footage of the riots with his filmed versions to capture a visceral authenticity that’s eerily reminiscent of the civil unrest seen on the news the past few months.

The courtroom and legal-eagle stuff, however, is where he truly shines. That snappy repartee and witty zingers folks loved from “The West Wing” and “The Newsroom” are here in spades, often involving Cohen. “Mr. Hoffman, are you familiar with contempt of court?” the unqualified judge levels at Abbie. His retort: “It’s practically a religion for me, sir.”

There’s enough outstanding acting going on that audiences will likely come away with different favorites. Abbie and Jerry, who teaches people how to make Molotov cocktails and cherry bombs, are the resident comic relief, though there’s a depth and passion to their righteous cause that are all Cohen and Strong. (And if you’re just familiar with Cohen's comedy bits and “Borat,” there’s a scene with Redmayne that showcases his considerable dramatic chops.)

Abdul-Mateen, who just won an Emmy for “Watchmen,” deserves some serious Oscar consideration as Bobby, a man discriminated against pretty much every time he stands up. Mark Rylance does his best work since his Oscar-winning “Bridge of Spies” turn as quiet but furious defense attorney William Kunstler, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is effective as federal prosecutor Richard Schultz, and Michael Keaton is delightful dropping in for only a couple of scenes yet almost hijacks the whole shebang as former attorney general Ramsey Clark.

While character development is a bit of an issue with so many personalities rioting, arguing and bantering, it doesn’t impede the thought-provoking nature of “Chicago 7” or parallels that Sorkin draws between the ‘60s and now – and without a bunch of narrative gymnastics.

The filmmaker crafts an entertaining, immersive and ultimately optimistic spectacle that never forgets, especially at its ending, that humanity should always trump the system.

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‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’: What to Know About the Netflix Film

Aaron Sorkin’s Netflix film dramatizes the notorious 1969 political trial with many players. Use this guide to understand the people and the issues at stake.

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By Nancy Coleman

Scores of protesters in streets across the country. A looming presidential election. Violent stand-offs between law enforcement and the citizens they had sworn to protect. And, amid the prospects of political and cultural change, a chilling and inescapable backdrop: thousands upon thousands of Americans dead.

The summer of 2020 was, by any stretch, a historic one. But for some it’s a season that feels remarkably like the summer of 1968.

Instead of President Trump, it was Lyndon B. Johnson, succeeded by Richard M. Nixon. The tragedy that cost American lives was not a pandemic but the war in Vietnam. Racism was central to the protests — the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated just months earlier — but so were a relentless draft and demands for peace.

In late August, tensions culminated in Chicago, in the shadow of the Democratic National Convention. The National Guard, U.S. Army troops and 12,000 Chicago police officers were mobilized against 10,000 demonstrators. (Who, yes, were called “ outside agitators ” then, too.) “Everything since Chicago,” the New York Times journalist Tom Wicker wrote one year later , “has had a new intensity — that of polarization, of confrontation, of antagonism and fear.”

Seven organizers — give or take — emerged as leaders whom the federal justice system could indict. Their contentious slog through the courts is dramatized in Aaron Sorkin’s “ The Trial of the Chicago 7 ,” which began streaming Friday on Netflix . Sorkin, who wrote and directed the film, stayed relatively close to the facts of the case — tongue-twisting Sorkinese aside — and pulled some of the dialogue straight from courtroom transcripts. But for everything that doesn’t fit in two hours on screen, here’s what to know about the case and its defendants.

Who were the Chicago 7?

Demonstrators at the convention were not a monolith, but a collection of several factions: among them, the Youth International Party, or Yippies; Students for a Democratic Society; and the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. All were focused, at least in part, on pacifism and ending the war.

The Chicago 7 were prominent faces in the various groups. Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin (in the film, Sacha Baron Cohen and Jeremy Strong) were founders of the Yippies — a party which, like its leaders, had a flair for the theatrical. At one point in the trial, Hoffman and Rubin showed up sporting judicial robes matching those of the judge, Julius Hoffman (Frank Langella). The two Hoffmans were not related, which did not stop the defendant from calling the judge his “ illegitimate father ” in court.

David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch) led the National Mobilization Committee and was two decades older than Hoffman, the next eldest defendant. At the trial, The Times wrote in Dellinger’s obituary in 2004, he “loomed over his co-defendants in age, experience, heft and gravitas.”

Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne) and Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp) were in charge of the National Mobilization Committee’s Chicago office, and both were former leaders of the Students for a Democratic Society. Hayden was an established organizer of student protests, including the occupation of campus buildings at Columbia University. Davis, the only defendant other than Hoffman to testify, offered a powerful account in court of his experience in Grant Park during the week of the convention, when multiple officers beat him to the point of losing consciousness.

Lee Weiner (Noah Robbins) and John Froines (Danny Flaherty) were both academics: Froines was a chemistry professor at the University of Oregon, Weiner a research assistant in the sociology department at Northwestern University. They were involved in the National Mobilization Committee, but unlike the others, neither was a leader of any group. And also unlike the others: Both were cleared of all charges against them at the end of the trial.

How did the Chicago 8 become 7?

Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), a founder of the Black Panther Party, was the final — and most puzzling — defendant. He had never met some of the seven before the trial, even though all eight had been accused of conspiring with each other to incite a riot.

Seale and Judge Hoffman were continuously at odds during the trial. Seale’s lawyer, Charles Garry, was stuck in California for health reasons and unable to travel. Seale repeatedly asked to represent himself and was repeatedly refused by the judge (whom he subsequently called a “pig,” “fascist” and “racist”).

After weeks of bickering, Judge Hoffman ordered federal marshals to bind and gag Seale during his appearances, a visual that stunned the country. He eventually declared a mistrial in Seale’s case, leaving seven defendants — and sentenced Seale to four years in prison for 16 counts of contempt.

How did the trial unfold?

Sorkin didn’t have to do much to spice up the story. The trial, which began in the fall of 1969 and lasted nearly five months, was defined by dramatics on all sides. The defendants — and their lawyers, William Kunstler (Mark Rylance) and Leonard Weinglass (Ben Shenkman) — openly defied Judge Hoffman in his courtroom. (Collectively, the lawyers and their clients were convicted of more than 150 counts of contempt.) Squabbles over procedure were constant, and the judge himself, according to the Federal Judicial Center, made few attempts to disguise his bias against the defense.

None of this helped the defendants, who were facing unprecedented charges: They were the first to be prosecuted under the Anti-Riot Act , a provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1968. They stood accused of conspiring to incite a riot, and six (Seale included) were charged with crossing state lines with the intent of inciting a riot. The final two, Weiner and Froines, were instead accused — and later cleared — of teaching others how to make explosives.

The defense’s stance was that the case was more of a political trial than a criminal one. Still, five defendants — Hoffman, Rubin, Dellinger, Hayden and Davis — though acquitted of conspiracy, were found guilty of the riot charge relating to interstate travel. Judge Hoffman imposed the maximum sentence of five years each — a ruling that became irrelevant in 1972, when an appeals court unanimously overturned the riot convictions.

In the years after the trial, most of the defendants continued on paths of activism: Hayden won a seat in the California Legislature, Hoffman gave lectures and wrote several books, and Weiner joined the Anti-Defamation League as a political consultant. Kunstler became known for defending leftist causes and unpopular clients.

But for most, the convention protests remained the most memorable part of their legacy. The demonstrators they led, and the law enforcement they clashed with, Wicker wrote, “tore the rubber masks of affluence and power and security off American society and gave the nation a new view of itself — challenged and unsure, contorted and afraid, in contention for its own soul.”

Nancy Coleman is a reporter on the Culture desk and a member of the inaugural New York Times fellowship class. More about Nancy Coleman

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Aaron Sorkin’s Annoying Tics Are Actually Good in The Trial of the Chicago 7

This review originally ran in September. We are republishing it on the occasion of the movie’s release on Netflix.

The most maddening, irresistible proposition in an Aaron Sorkin production is that a speech can change hearts and minds. Sorkin loves speech, period — motormouthed walk-and-talks where the cleverness of the characters mitigates the fact that they sound awfully similar, quippy exchanges that ping-pong back around to an eventual callback, arguments that rise in a calculated crescendo until one character breaks into a yell and the room abruptly falls silent. He’s a playwright who moved into film and then television and, more recently, started to direct. The Trial of the Chicago 7 , about the protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the seven participants who were charged by the federal government with crimes like conspiracy and inciting a riot, is Sorkin’s second venture behind the camera, after Molly’s Game in 2017. But he’ll always be a writer first, and you can see it in his certainty that the correct words, delivered with the proper amount of conviction, can win someone over from the other side of the aisle, even if it’s only one instance — cracking a closed mind open with some carefully crafted sentences.

There are a lot of speeches in The Trial of the Chicago 7 , but it’s hard to mind, given what it’s about. This film is one of those exhilarating instances when Sorkin finds a context in which all of his well-established impulses that can be so annoying elsewhere — the self-righteousness, the straw men, the great men, the men who aren’t onstage but are nevertheless digging deep in their diaphragms to deliver their lines to the back row — actually work. (It helps that there are almost no women here for Sorkin to mangle.) It’s about a trial, and it’s about activism, two worlds where people spend a lot of time trying to move hearts and minds with instances of grandstanding. The film moves between these innately theatrical spheres with a crackling energy, slipping easily from the courtroom in 1969 to the preparations and protests in 1968. What makes it so rousing is not the floridness of the dialogue but the way it’s used to acknowledge that moral clarity is not an end unto itself. While Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Schultz (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), acting at the behest of the new Nixon administration, tries to create a monolithic bogeyman out of the “radical left,” we’re shown how little agreement there actually is on the side of the seven defendants as to what it means and how to effect change.

There’s so little agreement that there are actually eight defendants when the trial begins. Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) insists on his own representation, despite being forced to fend for himself after his lawyer has a medical emergency. It’s politically expedient for the prosecution to group Bobby in with the others in what they dub “the all-star team,” but he rejects the forced comparison — “Your life, it’s a fuck-you to your father, right? And you can see how that’s different from a rope on a tree?” he asks Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne) midway through the movie, after Fred Hampton (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) is killed by the FBI. Tom and Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp) are part of Students for a Democratic Society, and their focus on stopping the war and winning elections doesn’t entirely jibe with the anti-authoritarian Yippies, as represented by Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen) and Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong), who want a cultural revolution as well as a political one. Their readiness to hurl Molotov cocktails in turn contrasts with David Dellinger’s (John Carroll Lynch) committed pacifism. John Froines (Danny Flaherty) and Lee Weiner (Noah Robbins), more minor players who comment from the sidelines, muse that “this is the Academy Awards of protests, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s an honor just to be nominated.”

It’s a sprawling ensemble — capped by Mark Rylance and Ben Shenkman, as the group’s attorneys, William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass, and Michael Keaton in a small but pivotal role — and Cohen and Strong emerge as the standouts. They sometimes feel like a stoner-comedy duo, with Strong doing a voice best described as Tommy Chong by way of Bullwinkle J. Moose. But Cohen emphasizes Abbie’s shrewdness, the intention behind all the jokey irreverence. The Trial of the Chicago 7 plays fast and loose with certain details; when Seale was infamously bound and gagged at the order of Judge Julius Hoffman (Frank Langella), who wears his biases openly, it was for days, not for the minutes shown in the movie before his trial is severed from the rest of the defendants’. But as an account of history as filtered through Sorkin’s sensibility, the film takes a thrillingly unexpected, if also understated, turn against civility. When Abbie and Tom have it out over who should be the one among them to take the stand, it’s Abbie whose point is the better one and Abbie who tells the courtroom, “I think the institutions of our democracy are wonderful things that right now are populated by terrible people.”

Sorkin will always romanticize the idea of the honorable conservative and the promise of polite bipartisanship that accompanies it. At the end of a talk at the San Sebastián Film Festival earlier this week, he offered up his scenario for how he would script the end of Election Night, and it was more unbearable than anything The Newsroom had to offer: Trump refuses to concede, and “for the first time, his Republican enablers march up to the White House and say, ‘Donald, it’s time to go.’” It’s the reason that fantasy of the perfect speech is as nauseating as it is appealing: It’s one based around the idea that there’s a universal understanding of what is right and that everyone wants to act on behalf of it, once enlightened or appropriately shamed. From the first time Gordon-Levitt appears onscreen as Schultz, who is portrayed as an eager up-and-comer disturbed by some of the trial’s developments, it’s obvious that the movie won’t be able to resist giving us some sign that he’s not just a good soldier. It’s an eye-rolling moment but minor compared with the film’s underlying acknowledgement that this trial was about attempting to punish people for refusing to abide by rules and structures that are inherently unfair. The movie ends not with a speech but with a listing of names — a reminder that demands for respectability and good behavior can equal demands for silence, especially when the straightforward speaking of facts counts as rebellion.

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• DVD & Streaming

The Trial of the Chicago 7

• Biography/History , Drama

Content Caution

In Theaters

• Eddie Redmayne as Tom Hayden; Alex Sharp as Rennie Davis; Sacha Baron Cohen as Abbie Hoffman; Jeremy Strong as Jerry Rubin; John Carroll Lynch as David Dellinger; Noah Robbins as Lee Weiner; Daniel Flaherty as John Froines; Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Bobby Seale; Kelvin Harrison Jr. as Fred Hampton; Mark Rylance as William Kunstler; Ben Shenkman as Leonard Weinglass; Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Richard Schultz; J. C. MacKenzie as Tom Foran; Frank Langella as Judge Julius Hoffman; Michael Keaton as Ramsey Clark; John Doman as John N. Mitchell

Home Release Date

• September 25, 2020
• Aaron Sorkin

Distributor

• Netflix, Paramount

Movie Review

They were, essentially, an all-star cast of liberal activists.

In 1969, Tom Hayden and Rennie Davis were proponents of what Hayden would call the “New Left,” impassioned and eloquent leaders of the Students for a Democratic Society. David Dellinger was a family man, Boy Scout leader and longtime conscientious objector, spearheading a movement to end the Vietnam War. Bobby Seale led the radical Black Panthers. Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin ran the Youth International Party—more popularly known as the “Yippies.” They practically defined, and stereotyped, the hippie anti-war movement.

Professors Lee Weiner and John Froines were lesser-known activists by 1969. In fact, when all eight of these left-leaning luminaries land in a Chicago courtroom, charged with inciting violence during the previous year’s Democratic National Convention, Lee quips to John that the trial is the “Academy Awards of protests, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s just an honor to be nominated.”

Apt comparison, perhaps: The trial indeed feels more like performance art than a quest for justice. Richard Schultz, the sharp-but-reluctant lead prosecutor, knows it from the beginning.

“We’re giving [the defendants] exactly what they want,” he tells his boss. “A stage and an audience.”

Abbie and Jerry play their own parts to the hilt—mocking the procedings and coming to court, one day, dressed as judges. The real judge, Julius Hoffman, proves to be a ready-made antagonist. He refuses to let Bobby Seale defend himself after Seale’s attorney falls ill—then has the Black man shackled and gagged when Seale disrupts the courtroom. He doles out contempt charges like lollypops, issuing 170 in all. If cameras had been allowed in the courtroom, it would’ve been the first true, salacious, reality show.

But for all of the charges leveled and theatrics in play, the question still lingers: Did any of the defendants actually commit a crime? How much of the trial is about the law and how much is about … theater?

Positive Elements

The Trial of the Chicago 7 is based, of course, on a true story—one that still echoes with cultural ramifications. The movie’s heroes and villains might still be partly determined by cultural leanings or political party affiliation: Someone’s hero might be another’s goat. So let’s choose one representative from each side of the squabble, shall we?

While some on trial came to Chicago ready for a fight, David Dellinger was not among them. The family man had been a pacifist for decades, and he shows his commitment to non-violent protest throughout the movie. Before he leaves for the Chicago demonstrations, he tells his son that one should always turn the other cheek. “Always nonviolence,” he tells his boy, “and that’s without exception.” Though some might disagree with him, you have to give the guy credit for the courage of his convictions. During the protests, David does his best to diffuse any violence before it starts. And when David’s own rage does violently erupt at one point, we see his regret immediately—and he immediately and sincerely apologizes.

Meanwhile, Richard Schultz has been tasked with getting David Dellinger and his fellow defendants (most of whom had never met each other before) charged with conspiracy and thrown in jail. From the beginning, he expresses doubts about the strength of the government’s case. But that doesn’t stop him from being a zealous and ethical prosecutor, doing his upmost to convict his defendants while still respecting them, the court and the process as much as he can. In a trial that’s portrayed in the movie as political theater, Schultz can seem like the only man treating the trial like a trial.

Spiritual Elements

Abbie Hoffman quotes Matthew 10:35, where Jesus says, “I am come to set a man at variance with his father and the daughter against her mother.” He argues that, taking that verse alone, you could argue that Jesus was suggesting that “kids kill their parents.” But Abbie adds that, once you read Matthew 10:34 and Matthew 10:36, the meaning is clear—and he uses the illustration as a plea to not take stray statements out of (what he believes to be the correct) context.

When Black Panther leader Bobby Seale is heading to Chicago to speak of the protests, he’s told that his speech (which exhorts his listeners to “fry the pigs”) is too confrontational. As someone begins to invoke the name of Martin Luther King, Seale cuts the woman off. “King’s dead,” he says. “Malcom [X] is dead, Bobby [Kennedy] is dead, Jesus is dead. They tried it peacefully; we’re gonna try something else.”

Abbie Hoffman says contempt of court “is practically a religion for me, sir,” but also mentions that his grandfather was a “Russian Jew protesting anti-Semitism.”

Sexual Content

A woman has her shirt forcibly ripped open during a riot, exposing her bra. Another woman, answering phones where the trial’s defendents meet with their lawyers, is apparently the recipient of an obscene, racist phone call. We can’t hear what the caller says, but the woman says that she’s slept with a variety of partners that are both white and black, and she eggs on the caller by telling him/her which race she prefers.

Jerry Rubin gets involved with a woman who turns out to be an undercover officer. When asked if he’d had sex with her, Jerry says that they were “taking it slow.” Abbie, in conversations and standup comic speeches, repeatedly refers to politicians and their mistresses (using more crass terminology at times). When Abbie and Jerry apply for a permit to demonstrate in Chicago’s Lincoln Park, Abbie informs the official that there would likely be “public fornication” there. He encourages people to attend the demonstration by suggesting that they’ll be able to have casual sex there.

Someone types up perhaps a government form that mentions “sex” and “promiscuity.” Someone refers to protesters as “fairies.” Women burn bras.

Violent Content

In flashbacks to the riots themselves, we see some terrible acts—mostly, the movie implies, perpetrated by the police. Officers beat demonstrators with batons and spray them with mace. We see some drive vehicles with barbed wire wrapped around their bumpers, called “Daley Dozers” (named after Chicago Mayor Richard Daley). Blood flies from weapons, seeps from wounds and splatters on the ground. One woman is nearly raped before being rescued by Jerry. Several people are shown with some pretty bloody injuries in the aftermath (along with at least one person trying to wash tear gas out of her eyes with milk).

Security guards wrestle with Seale, shackling his wrists and ankles and stuffing a rag into his mouth so he can’t talk in the courtroom.

A man named Fred Hampton, a local Black Panther leader, is shot and killed during the trial. We see what appear to be historical photographs of the dead man, and we hear a graphic description of how he was shot in the shoulder (so he couldn’t use a gun) and then in the head. “He was executed,” Seale says. Seale, meanwhile, is spending his off-time in a prison cell—held because he allegedly killed a Connecticut police officer. (An associate swears that Seale’s innocent; the charges, we learn, were later dropped.) A couple of people receive threatening letters allegedly from (the movie suggests, doubtfully) the Black Panthers.

A man punches a security guard in the face. A couple of defendants nearly come to blows. David Dellinger was a conscientious objector for World War II, we learn, which made his own lawyer say, “Even I want to punch you!” Seale refers to America’s history of lynching black people. We hear gunshots and see some historical photos surrounding the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. One defendant keeps a record of the Americans who died in Vietnam during the course of the trial—a list that ultimately reaches to nearly 5,000 men. Protesters and police crash through a bar window. We hear about how napalm kills.

Jerry Rubin teaches a group of people how to make a Molotov cocktail (the recipe for which the movie passes on to the viewers). Others throw those flaming bottles at a Democratic campaign storefront. Some defendants seem itching for more direct confrontation with the police: When Abbie is asked if he’s worried about overreaction by police, he says, “We’re not concerned about it. We’re counting on it.” Whether any of the protest leaders were ready to take the first step is among the trial’s, and film’s most critical questions. But one leader, after seeing a friend attacked by several officers, makes a fiery speech that prosecutors could argue instigated the convention’s biggest riot. “If blood is going to flow,” he says, “let it flow all over the city!” (He later insists that he meant to say, “If our blood is going to flow.”)

Crude or Profane Language

Nearly 45 f-words (many paired with the word “mother”), about eight s-words and one use of the c-word. We also hear “a–,” “b–ch,” “d–n,” “h—,” “pr–k” and “f-ggot.” God’s name is paired with “d–n” four times, and Jesus’ name is abused about seven times. We see a few middle fingers flashed.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Abbie and Jerry make no secret about their drug use, and when someone calls the defense’s headquarters and offers to donate marijuana to the cause, the gift is readily accepted. We hear several references to drug use from both of them throughout the film, and Abbie quips that it helps him deal with certain moral ambiguities. When Abbie’s lawyer asks him in court whether he’s stoned, Abbie says, “Yeah. You?” When applying for a permit, he warns the government official that certainly “psychedelic long-haired leftists will consort with dope users.”

Several people smoke, though whether they’re smoking cigarettes or marijuana joints isn’t always immediately apparent. Characters drink alcohol as well. A man tells some protest leaders that he can sell them “a–, weed, whatever you want.”

Other Negative Elements

The judge in the movie, Julius Hoffman, seems unabashedly biased against the defendants and makes some very questionable decisions. Abbie  believes that the trial is a political one, not a legal one—and (in the movie’s telling) he’s right: It suggests that John Mitchell, the country’s new attorney general, is using the trial largely to get back at the previous AG for a perceived slight. The Nixon administration had its own political reasons for bringing these men to trial, too, and it’s suggested that the only reason that Bobby Seale (who was in town for just four hours during the riots) is on trial was because he was black. “I was thrown in to make the group look scarier,” Seale says. There’s a suggestion that the prosecution might’ve tried tampering with the jury, as well.

Many of the defendants, especially Abbie and Jerry, treat the legal proceedings with absolute distain. They use the trial for their own political ends—much to the frustration of their own fellow defendants.

In a chance meeting, prosecutor Richard Schultz and Abbie Hoffman discuss the ongoing trial, particularly the theatricality of it all.

“I think you got the result you were looking for,” Schultz says.

“So did Nixon,” Abbie counters.

“How ’bout that?” says Shultz.

“Before a film can be anything else—relevant or persuasive or important—it has to be good,” Director Aaron Sorkin told Smithsonian Magazine . “This isn’t a biopic. You will get the essence of these real-life people and the kernel of who they are as human beings, not the historical facts.”

Give Sorkin credit for crafting a “good” movie, at least aesthetically speaking. Powered by a heavyweight cast (including Oscar winners Eddie Redmayne and Mark Rylance) and driven by Sorkin’s own snappy screenplay, The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a potent and surprisingly funny film, one that’s already being touted for a bevy of possible Oscar noms.

But Sorkin—creator of The West Wing and The Newsroom —is no impartial conveyor of history here. This story’s point of view unquestionably leans left polically. And honestly, Sorkin seems as interested in divisions within the progressive movement—then and now—as he is in the outcome of the trial.

At one point, Sorkin has the principled, clean-cut defendant Tom Hayden confront the wild-haired, perpetually stoned Abbie Hoffman. “My problem is that for the next 50 years, when people think of progressive politics, they’re gonna think of you,” he says. It almost seems as if it’s not Hayden speaking in that moment, but Sorkin—principled, erudite and unabashedly progressive Sorkin—himself.

But the film doesn’t get its R rating because of its politics. No, it earns that in a different way.

It’s fairly obvious that The Trial of the Chicago 7 —which dramatizes an event that happened more than 50 years ago—isn’t something that’s meant for children. But for those who might have a pint-sized future poli-sci major in their midst, be warned. This film offers plenty of blood and lots of bad language along with its engaging story. Our verdict, in this case, is to use all due caution.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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The trial of the chicago 7, common sense media reviewers.

Courtroom drama has relevant political messages, violence.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Some values are worth fighting for. Democracy rest

The defendants are on trial for organizing protest

Actual footage is mixed with fictionalized images

References to sexual activity include requests for

Various forms of "f--k," "damn" and "ass." Also "s

Brands mentioned but not promoted for consumption:

Adults smoke cigarettes and joints and drink liquo

Parents need to know that The Trial of the Chicago 7 tackles mature issues, involves scenes of violence inflicted by police, and depicts some authority figures making unethical decisions. Viewers with no context of the history behind this courtroom drama might feel lost at times or even bored. The film…

Positive Messages

Some values are worth fighting for. Democracy rests on the integrity of those in positions of power (governments, police, judges). Institutionalized racism was alive and well in the late 1960s. Anti-war protestors and progressives, or people who want to change the "system," come in a lot of different variations.

Positive Role Models

The defendants are on trial for organizing protests against the Vietnam War, where thousands of men their own age had been killed on duty for the US military. They -- and their lawyers -- display integrity, idealism, and courage in organizing protests and standing up to armed police, a corrupt judge, and racist acts. Two of the men snub their noses regularly at what they perceive as the unjust, "political" trial. Two other defendants seem to respect the courtroom and legal system more, which raises some in-fighting among the group over methods and principles. Another, who is a member of the Black Panther Party, is being treated unjustly, and even illegally, by the judge.

Violence & Scariness

Actual footage is mixed with fictionalized images of police spraying tear gas into crowds and beating protestors with wooden clubs. Protestors are shown with bloodied faces and heads. Several are pushed through a glass window after police have chased them down with heavy weaponry. Two men attack a woman and start undressing her before another man beats them back. Protestors talk about burning the "pigs" and offer lessons on making Molotov cocktails (shown at work when two men throw them into a US Army recruiting center). There's talk of the roughly 5,000 Americans killed to date in Vietnam and of young men sent to "be slaughtered" in the war. The deaths of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy are referenced, including talk of a bullet going through the latter's brain. Two court guards are instructed by the judge to take a Black witness into the back room, where they beat, gag, and cuff him. The same judge has shown bias against the sole Black witness and his companions in the courtroom. Crime scene photos depict a home shootout where another Black man was killed by police, "executed" according to autopsy reports.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

References to sexual activity include requests for park permits for "public fornication," suggestions of sleeping "with someone you just met," and a bar that's known as "a watering hole for Chicago's political class and their hookers." A woman answers the phone and seems to be answering racially-targeted questions about her sex life. An undercover cop tells protestors, "I'm your guy for ass, weed, whatever you need."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Various forms of "f--k," "damn" and "ass." Also "s--t," "c--t," "hell," "Christ."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Brands mentioned but not promoted for consumption: Brandeis, US Army, Johnny Walker, Chicago Tribune, Oscars, Hilton, Boy Scouts.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Adults smoke cigarettes and joints and drink liquor in bars, parks, and homes. A character is asked if he's "stoned," and he answers, "Yeah, are you?" There's mention of "weed," "grass," "dope," and "drugs."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Trial of the Chicago 7 tackles mature issues, involves scenes of violence inflicted by police, and depicts some authority figures making unethical decisions. Viewers with no context of the history behind this courtroom drama might feel lost at times or even bored. The film involves a lot of talking, which could fly over younger viewers' heads. But the main characters, the trial defendants and their lawyers, are idealistic about their rights to free speech and the plausibility of protesting for social justice, topics of great relevance today. They show integrity, seriousness, humor, and courage in standing up for their beliefs, including in tough scenes showing Black men abused by court guards or "executed" by police. The protests the seven are on trial for turned into bloody riots when protestors clashed with the thousands of heavily-armed police sent in, and these scenes, which combine fictional and archival footage, show police spraying tear gas into crowds and beating protestors with wooden clubs, resulting in bloody faces and heads. The times in general were violent, with thousands dying in Vietnam and political and social figures assassinated. There are sexual references and language, but not visual content. Language includes "f--k," "damn," "ass," "s--t," "c--t," "hell," and "Christ." To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (4)
• Kids say (11)

Based on 4 parent reviews

Great film. Aaron Sorkin usual.

Must watch historical drama, outstanding performances., what's the story.

The year is 1969 and 8 men are brought to trial for organizing anti-war protests the prior year outside the Democratic National Convention in THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7. The protests had been organized without the proper permits, and when thousands of riot police are sent in, they turn bloody. The defendants and their lawyers (Mark Rylance, Ben Shenkman) are convinced the charges are politically motivated, and in the general social upheaval of the late 1960s, there's a wide breach between the traditional bureaucracy and growing social movements. The new Nixon government has called in young prosecutor Richard Schultz ( Joseph Gordon-Levitt ) to take the case, assigned a seemingly unscrupulous judge (Frank Langella). Among the defendants are hippies Abbie Hoffman ( Sacha Baron Cohen ) and Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong), of the Youth International Party (known as the Yippies), the more clean-cut Tom Hayden ( Eddie Redmayne ) and Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp) of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and Black Panther Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II).

Is It Any Good?

THis is a suspenseful and sometimes eloquent film with inspired casting that paints '60s-era anti-war activists as flawed heroes up against a corrupt bureaucracy. You'd expect nothing less from the creator of that beacon of principled progressive politics, The West Wing . Writer-director Sorkin's focus on the trial rather than the bloody riots of 1968, which we don't glimpse until more than 45 minutes into The Trial of the Chicago 7 , allows the actors to shine with Sorkin standards like fast-paced intellectual sparring and moving displays of courage and righteousness. Baron Cohen, Redmayne, and Rylance were particularly inspired choices in an entirely male-centric cast (and story). They embody their characters' demeanors and accents as well as their passion and intelligence.

The world could use more Hoffmans and Haydens, as they're depicted by Sorkin: whip-smart, committed social critics with, in Hoffman's case, a razor-sharp wit and no fear of authority. In one of the film's best lines, Hoffman sneers at the prosecutor's questioning: "Give me a moment, would you, friend? I've never been on trial for my thoughts before." Some historical knowledge is helpful but not essential, and also not a spoiler here. A 7-minute introduction confuses as much as it contextualizes, giving too much information too fast. The film's relevance to contemporary social upheaval could not be clearer, particularly in the subtexts of racial injustice and excessive use of police force. It's hard to imagine this wasn't fully intentional. At one point, for example, the camera closes in on a protestor's sign reading "Lock them up!" A later scene closes to voiceover chants that "the whole world is watching."

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the historical events depicted in The Trial of the Chicago 7 . What did you know before, and what did you learn from the movie?

What other films have you watched that revolve around courtrooms?

What parallels can you make between the movements and protests portrayed in the film and some of the social upheaval today in the US?

Have you watched other films or series made by the writer-director of this film, Aaron Sorkin ? What common themes or techniques did you detect?

Movie Details

• On DVD or streaming : October 16, 2020
• Cast : Eddie Redmayne , Sacha Baren Cohen , Mark Rylance
• Director : Aaron Sorkin
• Studio : Dreamworks Pictures
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : Activism , Friendship , History
• Character Strengths : Courage , Integrity
• Run time : 129 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : drug use, bloody images, language throughout, some violence
• Award : Golden Globe
• Last updated : February 18, 2023

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The Trial of the Chicago 7 review - totally exasperating court drama

Aaron Sorkin is at his most portentous with this inert film, stuffed with stars, which mislocates the point of the trial it dramatises

S creenwriter Aaron Sorkin , creator of TV’s The West Wing and the birth-of-Facebook movie The Social Network , can give you sizzling dialogue and get you almost delirious with excitement about contemporary ideas. But he can also become fantastically ponderous, bloated with finger-waggingly self-important liberal patriotism. Sadly, that is the tone with this exasperatingly dull, dramatically inert and faintly misjudged re-creation of the “Chicago Seven” trial in the US, which Sorkin has written and directed.

In 1968, the incoming Nixon administration greenlit the punitive prosecution of seven supposed ringleaders of a violent anti-war protest at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. In fact, they were originally the “Chicago Eight”, but charges were finally dismissed against the Black Panther leader Bobby Seale, who was notoriously bound and gagged in the courtroom to keep him silent. Somehow, this film manages to keep Seale in a peripheral role, concentrating far more on how upset the verbose white liberals are at his treatment.

After a long and earnest news-footage montage setting out the background, we get a long and earnest trial; finally the key arrests themselves are dramatised in flashback. Sacha Baron Cohen is wittily cast as the anarchist counterculture leader Abbie Hoffman, whose standup comedy routine is occasionally shown as a narrative device; Jeremy Strong is Hoffman’s bearded and laidback comrade Jerry Rubin; Eddie Redmayne is civil rights activist Tom Hayden; John Carroll Lynch is the pacifist David Dellinger; Daniel Flaherty is fellow protester John Froines; Alex Sharp is Rennie Davis and Noah Robbins is Lee Weiner. Mark Rylance has little to work with in the role of civil rights lawyer William Kunstler but Frank Langella is scene-stealingly grumpy as the reactionary and cantankerous Judge Julius Hoffman. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II plays Bobby Seale.

Most heart-sinking is the casting of Joseph Gordon-Levitt in besuited nice-guy mode as junior prosecutor Richard Schultz, who is, inevitably, imagined as the mandatory West Wing-Sorkin liberal establishment figure with real doubts about what he is doing and is, in spirit, almost on the defendants’ side. (In fact, the contemporary reports describe the real him as the government’s pitbull whose lips “ would twist into a snarl and he would leap toward the lectern denouncing the defendants or their attorneys for some unspeakable new crime.”)

Sorkin has a few zingers here: it’s entertaining when one of the Seven, wondering why he has been prosecuted, concludes drolly that these are the “Academy Awards of protest” and it’s an honour just to be nominated. Strong has a nice moment when someone throws an egg at Rubin from the crowd as he walks into the courtroom and with weirdly unexpected quick reflexes he catches it – and then doesn’t quite know what to do with it.

But again and again, scenes and lines land with a solemn clunk. Minor and major figures, played by minor and major stars, show up with their characters’ names grandly flashed up on screen and the drama simply hasn’t earned their presumed aura of glamorous historical importance. And when something really important and dramatic happens – namely, the extraordinarily spiteful gagging of Bobby Seale – the padding of all this courtroom waffle and progressive concern muffles the shock. “Can you breathe?” someone asks Seale from the public gallery. It’s a question intended to resonate with the BLM age, but this can only provoke the issue of whether the whole film should not really have been centrally about Seale: the Chicago One.

Later, the moderate Tom Hayden has a very self-conscious debate with the more radical Hoffman about his irresponsible methods, and says angrily that he’s concerned that when people in future think about protest: “They’re gonna think of you! ” Really? Hoffman has rather sunk into oblivion in pop culture: not so the Black Panthers, who are not really considered in this discussion.

And so Day 1 and Day 23 and Day 156 of courtroom drama roll portentously across the screen, with the film congratulating itself for being on the right side of history and repeatedly aiming its shotgun at the fish in the barrel with such verve. What a trial it is.

• The Trial of the Chicago 7
• Drama films
• Sacha Baron Cohen
• Joseph Gordon-Levitt
• Mark Rylance
• Aaron Sorkin

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These fascinating Netflix movies are based on true events

Some of the best films of all time are based on stories that are so unique, they could only be based on a true story. In an era marked by the limitless possibilities of fantastical storytelling featuring superheroes and larger-than-life characters, there's a definite allure to films that draw inspiration from real events, offering audiences a grounded perspective on the world as it exists or once existed. 

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Amanda Kondolojy is an entertainment journalist based in Florida with over 15 years of experience covering film, TV, theme parks and more. When not in front of a screen you can find her reading something at the beach (usually by Neil Gaiman, Grady Hendrix or Brandon Sanderson) or dancing around the kitchen to her favorite showtunes. 

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Firefly Lane

Based on the novel by Kristin Hannah, this series chronicles the enduring friendship of Tully and Kate from their teens into their 40s. Starring Katherine Heigl and Sarah Chalke, it’s a heartfelt exploration of the highs and lows of lifelong friendship.

Netflix’s latest offerings showcase a rich variety of genres and storytelling styles, ensuring that there’s something to pique everyone’s interest. From intense dramas and historical pieces to action-packed thrillers and heartwarming tales of friendship, these new releases are perfect for your next binge-watching session. So grab your popcorn, settle in, and enjoy some of the best content Netflix has to offer right now. Happy watching!

The post 10 Incredible Netflix Movies & Shows You Shouldn’t Miss Out On appeared first on New York Tech Media .

• alec baldwin

Alec Baldwin pushes to dismiss manslaughter charge in hearing

Alec Baldwin's motion to dismiss his involuntary manslaughter charge stemming from the 2021 fatal shooting on the set of "Rust" will go before a New Mexico judge on Friday.

The actor was practicing a cross-draw in a church on the set of the Western film when the Colt .45 revolver fired a live round, fatally striking 42-year-old cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.

Baldwin, 66, who was also a producer on the film, was indicted by a grand jury on involuntary manslaughter in connection with Hutchins' death earlier this year, after prosecutors previously dropped the charge . He has pleaded not guilty and his trial is scheduled to start in July .

A remote hearing on the defense's motion to dismiss the indictment is scheduled for 10 a.m. MT Friday before Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer.

In the filing, his attorneys accused prosecutors of "unethical disparagement" of Baldwin and of "violating nearly every rule in the book" to secure a grand jury indictment.

"The State did not make Baldwin's witnesses available to testify. Nor did it present the exculpatory and favorable evidence to the grand jury," the motion to dismiss stated.

"The State prosecutors have engaged in this misconduct -- and publicly dragged Baldwin through the cesspool created by their improprieties -- without any regard for the fact that serious criminal charges have been hanging over his head for two and a half years. Enough is enough," the motion, filed in March, stated.

In a response filed in April, prosecutors claimed Baldwin missed concerns about the film's armorer, Hannah Gutierrez, and "compromised safety" on the set by demanding the crew and Gutierrez work faster.

"The combination of Hannah Gutierrez's negligence and inexperience and Alec Baldwin's complete lack of concern for the safety of those around him would prove deadly for Halyna Hutchins," prosecutors stated.

Gutierrez, 27, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced in April to 18 months in prison, the maximum, in connection with the October 2021 shooting.

She appealed her conviction earlier this week.

ABC News' Aaron Katersky contributed to this report.

Related Topics

• ALEC BALDWIN
• DEADLY SHOOTING
• MANSLAUGHTER
• U.S. & WORLD
• ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
• FATAL SHOOTING

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The Bikeriders

After a chance encounter, headstrong Kathy is drawn to Benny, member of Midwestern motorcycle club the Vandals. As the club transforms into a dangerous underworld of violence, Benny must cho... Read all After a chance encounter, headstrong Kathy is drawn to Benny, member of Midwestern motorcycle club the Vandals. As the club transforms into a dangerous underworld of violence, Benny must choose between Kathy and his loyalty to the club. After a chance encounter, headstrong Kathy is drawn to Benny, member of Midwestern motorcycle club the Vandals. As the club transforms into a dangerous underworld of violence, Benny must choose between Kathy and his loyalty to the club.

• Jeff Nichols
• Jodie Comer
• Austin Butler
• 7 User reviews
• 16 Critic reviews
• 73 Metascore

• Funny Sonny

• Gary Rogue Leader

• The Kid's Mother
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• The Kid's Father
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• Trivia In October 2018, Jeff Nichols revealed he had been thinking about making a biker film set in the 1960s for five years, although he did not at that stage have a script, and mentioned the idea on the set of Long Way Back Home to Michael Shannon who reportedly told him "You've been talking about that damn idea for so long. You're never gonna make that [film]".

Johnny : [from trailer] I've been thinking, I can run this club forever. I've built this from nothing. This is our family. You and me kid.

• Soundtracks Lonely Room Written by J. M. Rigter and Willie Murray Performed by Mickey Murray Courtesy of Sun Records

User reviews 7

• Sep 7, 2023
• How long will The Bikeriders be? Powered by Alexa
• June 21, 2024 (United States)
• United States
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• Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
• Focus Features
• Regency Enterprises
• New Regency Productions
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Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 56 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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