The Trial of the Chicago 7 Review

Sorkin does what Sorkin does, and this material happens to be built for it: a courtroom, eight defendants who cannot stand each other, and a judge whose rulings supply the outrage a script would otherwise have to invent. The dialogue is fast, quotable and audibly written, and the film is at least honest about that, letting Abbie Hoffman perform for a crowd inside the story too. Sacha Baron Cohen is the surprise, playing Hoffman as a serious political mind hiding behind a routine, and Mark Rylance gives the defense table its only quiet.

Frank Langella's Julius Hoffman is the engine, a man losing control of a room while insisting on decorum. The binding and gagging of Bobby Seale is staged with real force and then, uncomfortably, used as a beat in somebody else's arc. Sorkin the director is less interesting than Sorkin the writer: the flashback structure is tidy, the crosscutting to the riot is conventional, and the final roll call is exactly the ending you expect. As history it simplifies. As a courtroom picture it moves, and it argues.