Warning: This review contains spoilers.
But with tear gas, police surrounding protesters, and Mayor Richard J. Daley’s vow to increase police and National Guard presence, the protest visuals looked eerily similar to recent events, as people across the country took to the streets to protest the police killings of Black people this summer, set off initially by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. (According to the U.S. National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence later, police did in fact cause the violence during the 1968 DNC protests.)
The Chicago 8 became the Chicago 7 as Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) was severed from the case. Seale—who had been in Chicago a total of four hours to deliver a speech during the protests—continually requested his trial be postponed until his lawyer could be present or to represent himself in his lawyer’s absence as the other seven men had the same representation. The judge denied every one of Seale’s requests, and when the judge tired of him speaking out, he had him chained and gagged.
Since the trial started, 4,752 U.S. troops have been killed in Vietnam, Hayden says—before proceeding to read each of their names and ages. And although this dramatized ending did not actually occur this way, it makes a statement: there’s a responsibility to stand up when the world is watching, to remember those who lost their lives, and to say their names. v
Dir. Aaron Sorkin, R, 130 min. Netflix
