Ah, Aaron Sorkin, the king of U.S. coast progressives, always showing intelligent articulated people standing for what they believe in, in the face of insurmountable odds. Who would not love these heroes? Only it gets harder and harder to do that when all of these films kind of blend together. It's the same formula: the great cast on both sides of the argument, but all working to making just the liberal one appear sympathetic, the arrogant powerful fearful and mindless opposition, almost cartoonish in their villainy, with at least one member who would switch sides at one moment or another, the intellectual sarcastic humor delivered at high speed, the heroic musical moment at the end which shows good prevail. It's preaching to the choir, is what this is.
There is one more element that is common to recent films about the great American historic past: they are all reinterpretations for dramatic purposes. Starting with celebrity biopics, going through the war hero movies and ending with the kind of political manifesto genre in which The Trial of the Chicago 7 belongs... they are all gross exaggerations, elements removed, added or rearranged to fit purpose. I mean, yeah, it makes me feel good, but it doesn't convince. This did not feel historical, but caricaturesque.
So while I enjoyed the performance, it is nothing outside the realm of the expected. People who already believe in what the film has to say will watch and enjoy this, people who do not believe won't even watch it.
And in this particular case this is even worse, because what the story actually says is that because of sheer incompetence, a politically motivated plot against advocates for change failed. It's just like those films where the hero is close to death at every moment of the film and still he prevails. He does it because he is the hero of a movie, statistically everybody else would have failed miserably! If this film makes you think, as I believe Sorkin wants it too, then it gets you incredibly depressed and paranoid about the American system, always on the brink of autocracy and becoming a police state.
Bottom line: It makes us feel good to see how the Allies defeat the evil Nazis, who are presented as barely human, because of the stark contrast between us and them. How many of us stop to think that the same kind of logic lead to the Nazis in the first place? I wish films would be more about actual people and less about the one sided ideas they want to promote.
