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There are few Hollywood romances more intimate, indulgent, and prominently advertised than the one between Aaron Sorkin and the sound of his own voice. In any given Sorkin script, rarely will five minutes pass without a winking flourish of his distinctive, wise-ass style: every character wields his same quippy vocabulary; every burst of exposition is as elaborate as it is traceable; and every one-liner packs the punch of a third act twist. There can be no question that the man has been known to, on occasion, stray too deeply into his own labyrinthian dialogues and become hopelessly lost, but at his best, especially with a capable director like David Fincher or Danny Boyle to coax him along, his style truly earns its self-aggrandising prestige.

On the other hand, Sorkin’s directorial debut, Molly’s Game (2017) went almost unremarked upon by critics, suggesting to many that Sorkin was simply incapable of adapting his own scripts. In that regard, The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Aaron Sorkin, 2020) is certainly a step in the right direction. The set-pieces are mostly excellent and the performances are well-managed even if one gets the sense that the capable cast are interpreting the scripts independently of Sorkin’s guidance (Sacha Baron Cohen and Eddie Redmayne especially appear to be operating on two entirely different tonal registers). Ultimately however, the film is still let down by the inclusion of some of Sorkin’s worst, most distractingly stylistic impulses.

The film adapts the true story of a brutally unfair trial which followed a riot in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic convention, assembling an all-star cast to fill out both sides of the film’s central courthouse. Among the defendants are the aforementioned Redmayne and Cohen as Tom Hayden and Abbie Hoffman, a pair of very differently minded hotheads who have to be managed at all times by their world-weary lawyer William Kunstler (Mark Rylance). Opposing them is a team of smarmy, well-groomed prosecutors led by Richard Schultz (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who default into the favour of the intolerant, nastily biased judge (Frank Langella) from the trial’s opening minutes. Also present is Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), the leader of the Black Panthers who is forced to share a trial with the titular seven without the presence of his own lawyer. 

Sorkin’s script is essentially a mechanism for exploring every possible dynamic between the various clashing personalities within this courtroom, with largely powerful results. Abdul-Mateen II’s work as Seale is a particular highlight here, carrying us painfully through his constant struggle to contain the immense frustration of his kangaroo court treatment for fear of being demonised by the judge, a man barely making the slightest effort to mask his racist ideologies. Their conflict comes to a head approximately halfway through the film in a scene that should, by any degree of justice, earn Abdul-Mateen II an Oscar. He is truly electrifying in a way that utterly encapsulates the boiling anger of feeling dismissed that still plagues the African-American community to this day, and Langella rises to the challenge of matching his performance by crafting one of the ugliest, most monstrous villains in recent memory.

The film does not fare as well in the aftermath of this staggering clash, with poor Mark Rylance especially struggling as a lawyer who loses his faith in the law far too quickly. His performance is as exceptional as anyone familiar with his work might expect, but he is burdened with an arc which feels inescapably like an afterthought. Anyone hoping for a high-wire act on par with Sorkin’s career-defining work on A Few Good Men (Rob Reiner, 1992) will be more than disappointed by the trajectory on display here. Hayden and Hoffman fare slightly better as the media’s chosen faces for the trial, developing two opposing strategies to reckoning with this often dangerous publicity, but both characters are forgotten for long periods of time in the film’s second act. One gets the feeling that, without a director to manage his various spinning plates, Sorkin has struggled immensely to maintain a rhythm accounting for his entire vast ensemble. This is no Social Network (David Fincher, 2010).

Indeed, the notion of Sorkin’s input as a director hindering more than helping the film persists throughout. Several stylistic choices, such as a cartoonish gunshot sound effect dubbed over a still image of Martin Luther King on the day of his death, feel tasteless and excessive. Trial certainly cannot be accused of workmanlike direction behind the camera in the same vein as Molly’s Game, but that might not necessarily be a good thing. The film is undeniably at its strongest when Sorkin settles for the more practical camera set-ups within the courtroom, which allow his dialogue to soar through the air, uninterrupted by the poorly executed whims of a craft to which he is clearly not suited.

When The Trial of the Chicago 7 was first proposed by Sorkin in 2007, Steven Spielberg was reportedly attached to direct the project, and that loss weighs the film down harder than any of its tangible contents. The script is electrifying when it is allowed to breathe, and every performer commits wholeheartedly to their roles, as confused as their motivations may become over the course of the film’s 129 minutes, but a lack of directorial vision ultimately traps the film’s potential firmly within the realm of perfunctory, occasionally sloppy filmmaking. There is nothing wrong with a film as moderately pleasurable as this amidst the stress of the COVID era, but knowing of Sorkin’s capacity for greatness makes it difficult to forgive the mere adequacy of this latest effort.

 

The Trial of the Chicago 7 is available to stream on Netflix. 

 

Image Credit: The Trial of the Chicago 7. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Bobby Seale in The Trial of the Chicago 7. Cr. Niko Tavernise/NETFLIX © 2020