The Trial of the Chicago 7

In August 1968, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, Lee Weiner, John Froines, and Bobby Seale make preparations to protest at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Five months later, all eight of them are arrested and charged with trying to incite a riot. John N. Mitchell, the Attorney General, appoints Tom Foran and Richard Schultz as the prosecutors, while all the defendants except Seale are represented by William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass.

Judge Julius Hoffman shows significant prejudice for the prosecution. Seale's attorney, Charles Garry, cannot attend due to illness, leading Judge Hoffman to insist that Kunstler represents all eight defendants. This insistence is rejected repeatedly by both Kunstler and Seale. Seale receives support from Fred Hampton which Judge Hoffman assumes is legal help. Abbie Hoffman openly antagonizes the court. Judge Hoffman begins removing jurors who are suspected of sympathizing with the defendants due to reported threats from the Black Panther Party and charges the defendants and their attorneys with multiple counts of contempt of court.

Numerous undercover local police officers and FBI agents testify. At the time of the convention, Hayden noticed two police officers tailing Davis and attempted to let the air out of their tire, but was caught and later arrested. Abbie and others led a protest to the police station where Hayden was being kept but turned around upon seeing the police blockade outside. When trying to return to the park, police had taken control of the hill with orders to disperse the crowd. A riot ensued, and the protestors clashed with police in an attempt to claim the hill. Kunstler makes a point that none of the defendants instigated the riot.

Days later, the defendants learn that Fred Hampton was killed during a police raid. In retaliation to Seale continuing to speak up for his constitutional rights, Judge Hoffman has him taken to another room, beaten, and returned gagged and chained. The prosecution and defense object to the judge's order and Judge Hoffman declares Seale's case a mistrial.

The defense decides to put Ramsey Clark, Attorney General during the riots, on the stand. Judge Hoffman refuses to let him testify in front of the jury that he had declined to initiate prosecutions after the riots because of evidence that the Chicago Police Department instigated them. Dellinger punches a bailiff, resulting in his arrest.

Kunstler presents a tape implicating Hayden to the defendants, and preps Hayden for a cross-examination. On the night of the riot, Davis tried to pacify officers trying to arrest a minor who was climbing a flagpole. After the police clubbed Davis's head, an enraged Hayden exclaimed, "If blood is going to flow, then let it flow all over the city!". The defendants were eventually cornered by police, who removed their badges and proceeded to assault them. Abbie deduces that Hayden was taken out of context, claiming that the original statement would have started with, "If our blood is going to flow ... ."; Hayden asks him to testify.

In his testimony, Abbie reinforces that Hayden was misconstrued, and states his disdain for the U.S. government's leadership. At the end of the trial, despite Judge Hoffman's instructions and objections, Hayden uses the closing statement to name the 4,752 soldiers who were killed in the Vietnam War since the trial began. This act prompts many in the court to stand and cheer. An epilogue describes the lives of Abbie, Hayden, and Judge Hoffman after the trial.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 was originally scheduled by Paramount Pictures to begin a limited theatrical release on September 25, 2020, before going wide on October 16, 2020.[41][24] On June 20, 2020, due to the movie theater closures because of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, it was reported Netflix was in negotiations to acquire rights to the film.[42]

On July 1, 2020, the company officially closed a $56 million deal to distribute the film.[43] It was released in select theaters on September 25, 2020, Paramount's original date, and was made available digitally on Netflix on October 16.[44][45] Although Netflix does not publicly release the box office results of its films, Deadline Hollywood reported that the film averaged about 10 people per show at the 100 theaters it was playing in its opening weekend.[46]

Upon its digital release, it was the second-most streamed film over its debut weekend, which IndieWire called "higher than usual for a more-serious entry Netflix title."[47] It finished in tenth the following weekend.[48] In November, Variety reported the film was the eighth-most watched straight-to-streaming title of 2020 up to that point.[49]

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 90% based on 297 reviews, with an average rating of 7.8/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "An actors' showcase enlivened by its topical fact-based story, The Trial of the Chicago 7 plays squarely – and compellingly – to Aaron Sorkin's strengths."[50] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 77 out of 100 based on 48 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews."[51]

Writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, Richard Roeper gave the film four out of four stars, saying, "Certain events are rearranged from the factual timelines, and yes, The Trial of the Chicago 7 exercises poetic license. This is not a documentary; it's a dramatization of events that resonates with great power while containing essential truths, and it's one of the best movies of the year."[52] IndieWire's Eric Kohn gave the film a "B," saying Sorkin "directs his own blunt, energetic screenplay with the convictions of a storyteller fully committed to the tropes at hand," and that Sacha Baron Cohen "steals the show and transforms an otherwise stagey period piece into something far more compelling."[53] Owen Gleiberman of Variety praised Baron Cohen's and Redmayne's performances and said, "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."[54]

Jeremy Kagan, the writer and director of the 1987 film Conspiracy: The Trial of the Chicago 8, says "Sorkin is a gifted director and brilliant writer, but I am concerned that the generations who did not live through this time will now think of this version as what happened. And it wasn’t and isn’t. It is an interpretation," and "In my opinion, the new film does not do justice to the intense moral passion, irreverent humor and visceral dedication of these defendants and their lawyers."[55] Nathan J. Robinson of Current Affairs writes, "Sorkin takes [...] creative liberties with history that end up distorting it," including in how "Bobby Seale, the Black Panther defendant who was infamously bound and gagged in the courtroom when he continuously spoke out about the violation of his right to counsel, actually managed to repeatedly wriggle out of the physical restraints the government put on him; the film portrays the government as effective in silencing him."[56] Arionne Nettles of the Chicago Reader gave the film three stars and observes that it also "shows Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, supporting Seale—until police killed him in his home, in his bed, on December 4, 1969," noting, "The onscreen timeline of these events, however, are different. The film shows Seale being gagged the day after Hampton was killed, when he was actually gagged on October 29 and severed from the case on November 6."[57] Matthew Dessem at Slate offers a comparison of some of the film's events and characters to the actual history and suggests Sorkin "plays pretty freely with characters and events to ensure his clockwork screenplay hits exactly the right beats in exactly the right order."[58]

Several critics discuss the conclusion of the film, including Jeremy Kagan, who writes, "While this works as effective narrative cinema, it was David Dellinger who read the names, as shown in my film. It was also earlier in the trial [...] and he read the names of the Vietnamese as well as Americans who had died, as these defendants all knew this war was unnecessarily killing people on both sides."[55] In a review for The New York Times, Jason Bailey quotes the sentencing statement from Rennie Davis to Judge Hoffman: “You represent all that is old, ugly, bigoted, and repressive in this country, and I will tell you that the spirit of this defense table will devour your sickness in the next generation,” which Bailey describes as "the most Sorkin-eseque dialogue in the transcript," and its exclusion from the film as "downright baffling."[59] Arionne Nettles of the Chicago Reader, who found Sorkin's portrayal of Fred Hampton in the film made it "hard to not think of Breonna Taylor’s similar death in Louisville, Kentucky earlier this year," writes, "although this dramatized ending did not actually occur this way, it makes a statement: there’s a responsibility to stand up when the world is watching, to remember those who lost their lives, and to say their names."[57] John DeFore of The Hollywood Reporter writes, "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."[60]

• Sorkin, Aaron. The Trial of the Chicago 7: The Screenplay. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020. ISBN 1982163240. OCLC 1148870502
• Edited by Mark L. Levine, George C. McNamee and Daniel Greenberg / Foreword by Aaron Sorkin. The Trial of the Chicago 7: The Official Transcript. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020. ISBN 978-1982155094. OCLC 1162494002
• Edited with an introduction by Jon Wiener. Conspiracy in the Streets: The Extraordinary Trial of the Chicago Seven. Afterword by Tom Hayden and drawings by Jules Feiffer. New York: The New Press, 2006. ISBN 978-1565848337
• Edited by Judy Clavir and John Spitzer. The Conspiracy Trial: The extended edited transcript of the trial of the Chicago Eight. Complete with motions, rulings, contempt citations, sentences and photographs. Introduction by William Kunstler and foreword by Leonard Weinglass. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1970. ISBN 0224005790. OCLC 16214206
• Schultz, John. The Conspiracy Trial of the Chicago Seven. Foreword by Carl Oglesby. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020. ISBN 9780226760742. (Originally published in 1972 as Motion Will Be Denied.)

• The Trial of the Chicago 7 on Netflix
• The Trial of the Chicago 7 at IMDb
• Sorkin, Aaron (December 3, 2020). "The Trial of the Chicago 7 Script" (PDF). Deadline. Archived (PDF) from the original on December 13, 2020. Retrieved February 3, 2021.