The Trial of the Chicago 7..Now on Netflix...Sasha Baron Cohen as Abby Hoffman

[nuxvomica]

12. Entertaining, rousing and relevant

This movie boasts juicy Andrew Sorkin dialogue and wonderful acting, especially by Cohen who steals the show as the very reincarnation of Abbie Hoffman. Sorkin makes the central dramatic conflict between the impudent cultural revolution of Hoffman and the more respectful politics of Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne), a conflict played out against the horrifying treatment of Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) almost like a book-club argument near a war zone. There's a great exchange where Hayden ridicules Hoffman for being the guy who trades the cow for the magic beans and Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong, whom I was late to recognize as the rich heir from Succession) pipes in that there really was a giant at the end of the beanstalk after all -- that's progressive politics in a nutshell. I swear the leading point of all this was for a scene where Judge Hoffman (Frank Langella) worries about having former Attorney General Ramsey Clark (Michael Keaton) testify about a conversation he had had with President Johnson, and Clark's instructive response. But what was most disturbingly familiar to the present day was a scene where the defendants stop arguing with each other to watch a list of Vietnam casualties scroll down a TV screen, reminding me of our solemn daily reckoning of COVID victims. It's like we are always fighting the same battles even though the heroes and villains look surprisingly different in every era.