The Chicago 7 Trial: Aaron Sorkin's Netflix Movie is a Remarkable Court Thriller with Great Performances

Hello my dear friends.. Aaron Sorkin has been one of the most reputable screenwriters in Hollywood for many years, having gone on to win the Oscar for his script for the excellent ‘The Social Network’. His style is quite recognizable and has obviously given rise to better and worse works, but relatively recently he got a fever to direct, something he had not even tried with 'The West Wing of the White House', his most famous television creation that controlled with an iron fist for four seasons.

His first experience behind the scenes was with 'Molly's Game', an estimable but not particularly memorable film. In the second, he has chosen a striking true story to shape 'The Chicago 7 trial', one of Netflix's great assets for the next Oscars that arrives on the platform this Friday, October 16 after two weeks available on a limited basis in theaters. It is a judicial thriller with outstanding work by its actors and powerful dialogues, although it would surely have been good to have another person behind the cameras.

The film takes as a reference a trial held between March 1969 and February 1970 against a group of protesters against the Vietnam War. The charges against them were especially serious, and it became clear later that they sought to set an example with them. An act of repression that should have been overcome by now, but the echoes of the message transmitted by ‘The Chicago 7 trial’ reach our days and that is one of the great advantages that Sorkin has to connect with the public.

To say that the rich and witty dialogue in a tape written by Sorkin should be taken for granted would not be an exaggeration, since it has always been one of his distinguishing features and here they make an appearance again. Obviously, all oriented according to the clear position that it takes when focusing on the facts. It matters little what laws the defendants might break, since at all times it is exposed that they were doing the right thing and that the judge in charge of the case has little less than a personal crusade against them.

For this reason, the film is partly aimed at influencing the defendants' defiance, especially with the character played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, who at all times insists that he is not linked to the other seven and does everything that it is in his power to demand to be tried separately or even to represent himself. Sorkin describes them as a kind of epitome of all the positive values ​​that the film wants to convey, if anything with the exception that they can be somewhat stubborn, but they have no other in that scenario either.