The Whole World is Watching, So This Movie Should be Better: “The Trial of the Chicago Seven”12/15/2020 By Joshua Lancman ‘24 When I first found out about “The Trial of the Chicago Seven,” the new historical drama from screenwriter and director Aaron Sorkin, about a historical trial in which police brutality was heavily involved, I found myself envying the producers for having a film that would relate so closely to current politics. The trial, trying the organizers of a protest against the Vietnam War for inciting a riot truly started by the police, relates well to the current events of the long-running Black Lives Matter protests. Any producer who ended up owning the distribution rights to this film must admire their luck just a little bit, at least until they realize that they don’t have a particularly good film on their hands. “The Trial of the Chicago Seven” is not bad, but is absolutely average. It had no lasting emotional effect on me, and I had nothing interesting to think about once the film was over. The good guys are unequivocally good, the bad guys are definitively bad and the theme – abuse of power is not good – is both simple and communicated blandly.
The film did, however, keep my interest the entire way through its 130-minute runtime. The film moves quickly, establishing a brisk pace even at the very beginning, where it naturally establishes all of our main characters and the setting of the events of the story. It fluidly introduces us to each of the seven (the standout being Sacha Baron Cohen as Abbie Hoffman), their lawyer, and all of the other important players in the story. This establishment of character and setting is, along with the snappy dialogue, yet another show of Sorkin’s writing talent. He has, in the past three decades since 1992’s “A Few Good Men,” proven himself as a political and social commentator who is adept at expressing his ideas through the art of writing fiction for the stage or screen. However, he is not as adept at directing as he is at writing, which is where all the problems for this film lie. Sorkin’s directing is the source of the film’s blandness; it is traditionally shot with nothing in the visual sense proving in any way interesting. The acting varies between good (Baron Cohen and Eddie Redmayne as Tom Hayden), fine but they should have more to do (John Carroll Lynch as David Dellinger, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Richard Schultz) and ridiculously over the top (Frank Langella as the comically evil Judge Julius Hoffman). The editing is mostly serviceable yet bizarre at points, where recreations of famous events are mixed with what is either archival footage or something that is meant to look like it. Either way, it is completely jarring. Sorkin as a writer has a specific style; his characters are simple and relatable, often real people. He likes to drown the audience in information his characters would be consumed by in their normal lives, such as with the coding montage at the beginning of “The Social Network.” His dialogue is snappy and often relies on clever reincorporation. Yet as a director, he has no style. Instead, he is simply serviceable. He does not majorly mess up, but he does not elevate his own material. Simply put, he is too good of a writer to be making scripts for himself as a director. Because of this bland directing yet good writing, “The Trial of the Chicago Seven” is a fine movie. It is not great, yet it is not terrible. If you want something you could watch with your parents or grandparents, this would probably be a good film to pick. But if you want a great film to watch, choose something else. 6/10 |
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February 2022
Recent ScoresSoul: 9/10
Mank: 7/10 Social Dilemma: 9/10 Chicago Seven: 6/10 |