Film Review of The Trial of the Chicago 7 by Aaron Sorkin: Artificial Witty Lines

The film is based on the true story of the trial of the Chicago Seven, a group of political activists against American participation in the Vietnam war and other government policies in the 60s, who were charged for crossing state lines to incite riots during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Local American may be quite familiar with the background and the impact of the trial but others may need to do a bit of reading of American history, such as the political competition between Republican and Democratic, racism and social unrest due to the assassination of political leaders, to understand what is going on in the film.

Although Aaron Sorkin first started directing a film in 2017 (the "Molly's Game"), his name is not unknown in the media industry as he has written many award-winning screenplays such as "The Social Network" and "Steve Jobs" before. His scripts always involve loads of dialogues among characters and the trial of Chicago 7 bears the same trademark. At the beginning of the film, the eight main characters spoke quite a lot of lines in each scene, which lasts only a few minutes, alternatively. Audiences would be much overloaded with information at the start of the film but one may grasp the personality of characters briefly from the speaking of characters if one fully understands the historical context of 60s America at the beginning. 

Same as other Aaron's scripts, there were many witty lines in the film. However, I found them all too artificial - characters are speaking as what an ideal character would speak. I did keep expecting some witty lines that would be spoken by characters and did enjoy some such as Abbie said "I've never been on trial for my thoughts before." as he needed some time to think about the inquiries raised by the prosecutor Richard Schultz. However, without showing any internal conflicts or tension of the characters, the characters seem to be too polished to be real. 

                      

The film aims to reveal how a justice system failed under human prejudices and political interests. The main theme appears again and again in the film via the speech of the judge and defendants, such as Abbie Hoffman saying "it is a political trial", "We're not going to jail because of what we did, we're going to jail ". The judge's biased actions were too obvious to be noticed. Therefore, it successfully demonstrates how a legal system becomes the tool of authorities to suppress the opponents, and thus the failure of a well-established legal system. However, the film repeated the same plot again and again: defendants fought/spoke for freedom and were then suppressed by the judge. You can always expect something similar will appear again and find the same, or more or less, pattern until the end of the film 

                            

Throughout the whole film, I didn't really find it very interesting and engaging but at the same time not too boring to finish. But, if from the perspective of knowing more about the trial and America in the 60s, it is a good film. At least, it presents all the basic information of the trial in a more interesting way than reading a newspaper. However, I don't think it is a bit overeated.

Rating: 3/5