Netflix trailer for ‘Trial of the Chicago 7’ has people talking

The first look at Aaron Sorkin’s hotly anticipated ‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’, releasing on Netflix in October, has created buzz online.

The trailer shows signs of a high impact ensemble drama, something that writer-director Sorkin (‘The Newsroom’, ‘The West Wing’) is known to excel at. It stars Eddie Redmayne, Sacha Baron Cohen, Jeremy Strong, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Joseph Gorden Levitt, Alex Sharp and more.

The feature film is based on the notorious 1969 trial of seven defendants charged with conspiracy, in the aftermath of the countercultural protests at the Democratic National Convention in 1968.

“We wanna underscore again that we’re coming to Chicago peacefully, but whether we’re giving permits or not, we’re coming,” says Redmayne in the opening of the trailer. The British actor plays the late American anti-war and civil rights activist Tom Hayden.

“We’re going to Chicago to protest the Vietnam war,” chimes in Cohen as anarchist Abbie Hoffman. The trailer goes on to depict the corrupt justice system and institutional racism.

“We’ve dealt with jury tampering, wire tapping, a defendant that was literally gagged,” says radical lawyer William Kunstler (Mark Rylance), to which US District Judge Julius Hoffman (Frank Langella) responds, “You are the first to suggest that I have discriminated against a Black man.” Criminal defence lawyer Leonard Weinglass (Ben Shenkman) replies: “Then let the record show that I am the second.”

This will be Sorkin’s first feature film to release since ‘Molly’s Game’ in 2017. ‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’ will drop on Netflex on October 16. It’s set to hit select theatres this month.