Protesting goes before the court in The Trial of the Chicago 7, the latest from writer/director Aaron Sorkin.
Much like today, the ’60s was a time when America was showing its warts. The Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War had given people plenty of reasons to get out in the streets and protest, and by the time the 1968 Democratic National Convention took place in Chicago, the country was about to blow apart. Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy had been murdered earlier that year, leading to a showdown between protestors and the authorities trying to quell the upheaval that ended up right outside the convention.
Seven people would eventually stand trial for organizing the protests, setting up just the kind of longwinded, complicated debates Sorkin thrives on. The man behind The West Wing, Steve Jobs, and Molly’s Game is notorious for his distinctive dialogue, and a trial like this will give him plenty to chew on.
And of course, big names have been lined up to spout that verbiage. Eddie Redmayne, Sacha Baron Cohen, Jeremy Strong, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, John Carroll Lynch, Mark Rylance, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are just some of the people who will be forming characters out of the real people caught up in these events. And lucky for us, the pandemic means this all this goodness is coming directly into our homes via Netflix.
The Trial of the Chicago 7 is directed by Aaron Sorkin and stars Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Sacha Baron Cohen, and Daniel Flaherty. It will get a limited theatrical release in the US starting September 25th, 2020 and will release worldwide on Netflix on October 16th, 2020.
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