‘Chicago 7’ revisits the riots of 1968
Writer-director Aaron Sorkin, the creator and writer of “The West Wing” is gloriously back on his game with Netflix’s “The Trial of the Chicago 7.” A dramatization of the political trial of the century of seven men, most of them Vietnam War protesters, accused of conspiring to create a riot in Chicago on the occasion of the 1968 Democratic Convention, the film has a lot of defendants, lawyers, witnesses and others to track.
But “The Trial of the Chicago 7” is so brilliantly cast and acted, it is not a problem to keep track of them at all. At the top of the heap are Sacha Baron Cohen, who excels in spite of British accent slippage, as defendant, social and political activist Abbie Hoffman, the publicity hound and co-head of the Youth International Party aka Yippies; Jeremy Strong of “Succession” as Hoffman’s lonely-hearts buddy and YIP co-founder Jerry Rubin; Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as a fiery Bobby Seale, a Black Panther leader tried without representation and famously gagged and shackled; protean Englishman Mark Rylance as wise, low-key attorney William Kunstler; the great Frank Langella as the famously intolerant Chicago Judge Julius Hoffman; Academy award-winner Eddie Redmayne as activist and social theorist Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman’s opposite; John Carroll Lynch as actual Boy Scout leader, husband, father and defendant David Dellinger; and a cool-as-ice Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the lead prosecuting attorney Richard Schultz.
Although the Department of Justice of President
Lyndon Johnson concluded that the rioting in Chicago had been caused by the Chicago police, the Nixon administration, including Nixon Attorney General John Mitchell (a terrific John Doman), wants scapegoats on the left and brings the accusations against the seven defendants. The protests at the convention and the trial give birth to the slogan “The whole world is watching,” and they are both recreated and shown in archival footage, a fascinating mix of feature and documentary film-making. We see the riot in Chicago’s Grant Park. We see the police remove their badges and name tags and push demonstrators through the plate glass window of the Hilton Bar. And, of course, we are in Hoffman’s crazy courtroom, where some antics are hilarious; others outrageous.
In the supporting cast, among the standouts are Caitlin Fitzgerald (“Succession”) as undercover FBI agent Daphne O’Connor, who loses her perspective, but not her composure, and Alice Kremelberg as the defendants’ sharp-tongued receptionist. Ben Shenkman and Kelvin Harrison Jr. make fine contributions as defense attorney Leonard Weinglass and Black Panther head Fred Hampton, respectively. The film’s ace in the hole is Michael Keaton, naturally, as a defiant and patriotic former Attorney General Ramsay Clark, who drops a figurative bomb on the obviously rigged trial. Whether you were there devouring news about it daily or not, you must see “The Trial of the Chicago 7.”
“The Trial of the Chicago 7” contains profanity, violence and drug use.