This is the fourth filmed version of the sensational trial where Richard Nixon and his corrupt Attorney General John Mitchell (later found guilty of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and perjury and sentenced to two and a half to eight years in prison) tried to punish anti-Nixon activists for causing a riot at the 1968 Democratic convention, a case that the previous President's department of Justice had investigated and found groundless.
1968 was a turbulent year, seeing both the assassination of Martin Luther King and murder of Bobby Kennedy as he stood for the Democratic party during the Presidential primaries. The convention turned into a series of violent riots, mainly it is now agreed caused by and exacerbated by the brutal police response.
So the trial featured a grab-bag of protest leaders, from pacifist leader David Dellinger (Lynch) to Tom Hayden (Redmane), one of the founders of Students for a Democratic Society (and later a Senator), the notorious Yippies activists Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, and Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), a leader of the Black Panther Party.
And Sorkin, who also wrote the script of course, as assembled a fine cast to play these legendary figures, the highpoints being Sacha Baron Cohen's Abbie Hoffman and an unrecognisable Jeremy Strong - eldest son Kendal in TV's Succession - as the joker of the pack Jerry Rubin. Add in Frank Langella as the jaw-droppingly biased judge, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the conflicted chief prosecutor and most importantly Mark Rylance, brilliant as defense lawyer William Kunstler, and you have quite a cast. Oh yes, and Michael Keaton shows up late on...
But how does this all play? Well it plays very well because this is Aaron Sorkin writing the dialogue. It's very zingy, quotable one-liners at every turn. Think West Wing or any other Sorkin drama. Fast, smart, dialogue.
But in a way, that's a problem. There were so many almost unbelievable occurrences at the trial that you don't really need made up dialogue to dramatise them. Where Sorkin is particularly good is in delineating the different defendants' philosophies and approaches to their defense. The straight Tom Hayden clashing with Abbie Hoffman. But there are also court scenes that seem contrived when they really aren't.
The treatment of Black Panther Bobby Seale is front and centre here. It seems unbelievable but is true to life - how to convey this when other details have been changed for dramatic purposes? The worst of this is the ending, as the defendants' closing statements are engulfed in applause and celebration, the joyous "uplifting" finale that presumably the drama required.
There is so much that is so good here that I'd recommend anyone with an interest to watch it. There are - obviously - modern resonances. But there are also the regular things that make you grate your teeth at Sorkin productions, and that ending is just awful.
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| Hoffman / Cohen / Rubin / Strong |
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