Aaron Sorkin
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Connections, in both directions
One of the editors, Alan Baumgarten, worked on David O. Russell’s “ American Hustle ,” a movie that, like “Molly’s Game,” owes a large debt to Martin Scorsese’s native-son crime stories, including “Casino.”
Like 21 and Casino and other gambling biopics, Molly's Game grants you entrance into a glamorous milieu of riches and risk that would never accept you in real life.
What you don’t get here, however, is ironic distance of the sort that Scorsese (along with many imitators) employs in The Wolf of Wall Street, Casino, and elsewhere.
A fascinating rags-to-riches, fall-from-grace narrative, in the vein of Casino (1995), becomes an overstuffed and convoluted spider’s web in need of an edit.
Echoes to Scorsese are aplenty, especially Goodfellas and the criminally underloved Casino, but Sorkin’s script doesn’t have the same tenacity or operatic scope of those films, borrowing the kinetic style and voice overs but lacking the inspired attention to detail and deft, Catholic sensibility about the moral quandaries at play.
The story is a fall of the empire narrative; rags to riches then back to rags — and is broadly reminiscent of Casino or Boogie Nights.
Chicago 10 (2008)
Directed by Brett Morgen
influenced The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)
Visuals Plot
It’s a flashback structure reminiscent of the one the filmmaker adopted in The Social Network but also of an earlier film on this subject, Brett Morgen’s exhilarating agitprop documentary Chicago 10 , which tackled the same events with a mixture of archival footage set to modern rock and animated reenactments adapted from the court transcripts.
Morgen’s “Chicago 10” documentary filled that gap with a rotoscoped cast (including an inspired Hank Azaria as Hoffman) and wielded more cinematic ambition when it came to representing the events at hand.
Medium Cool (1969)
Directed by Haskell Wexler
influenced The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)
Themes Visuals
The Chicago Seven chapter has inspired numerous films, from Haskell Wexler's docu-fiction treatment of the DNC protests, Medium Cool, through Woody Allen's satirical take on the trial in Bananas, to Brett Morgen's mix of archival footage with animated scenes based on court transcripts, Chicago 10.
He even weaves in footage from Haskell Wexler’s Medium Cool.
Throw in the civic importance of Medium Cool as a cherry on top.
The Chicago DNC protests began peacefully and erupted into stunningly brutal violence, and Sorkin captures its horror here, weaving in some archival footage in the mode of Haskell Wexler’s groundbreaking 1969 fiction-nonfiction blend Medium Cool.
Sorkin’s camera doesn’t move a lot; he’s a front-and-center, time-for-a-closeup technician, and the way he stages and films the riot footage (interpolated with archival video from, among other sources, Haskell Wexler’s “Medium Cool” ) it’s routine chaos, desperately overscored by composer Daniel Pemberton.
The Social Network (2010)
Directed by David Fincher
influenced Molly's Game (2017), The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)
Themes Characters Visuals
A self-satisfied writer, the trouble is the balancing act between coming off too earnest and ultimately self-grandiosity (ahem, The Newsroom) and just earnest enough with a world weary level of naturalism (The Social Network).
While Molly’s Game doesn’t deviate from what Sorkin’s established as the baseline with Academy Award-caliber screenplays like The Social Network and Moneyball, his latest effort finds the scribe operating short of peak power.
Unlike the anti-heroes at the center of Sorkin’s The Social Network or Steve Jobs, Molly isn’t glib or dismissive of everyone and everything around her.
He’s one of my favorite writers of all time, The West Wing is my favorite TV show of all time, and The Social Network is one of my favorite movies of all time.
The narrative structure recalls Sorkin’s masterful use of Rashomon-influenced storytelling in “The Social Network.”
From The West Wing to The Social Network, Academy Award-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin has become famous for scripting rapid-fire volleys of dense, sharply written dialogue.
Sorkin’s didacticism is often his own worst enemy, but he mostly keeps his worst instincts in check here, and there are times when he almost seems to channel the great Otto Preminger, whose Anatomy of a Murder is perhaps the gold standard for courtroom dramas.
Except for Mudbound, no recent movie has voiceovers so lengthy and impressive as literature, and critic Manohla Dargis estimates that the script equals the 240-words-per-minute record set by His Girl Friday in 1940.
His Girl Friday, one of the great comedies of the 1940s, is remembered less for what it says, than how it says it.
Chastain and Elba bat dialogue back and forth like they were Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in “His Girl Friday.”
At his best he seems like the natural heir to the crackling screwball sensibility that powered 1940s classics such as His Girl Friday and The Lady Eve .
But Sorkin doesn’t pull off what, say, Paddy Chayefsky, in his scripts for such films as “Network” and “The Hospital,” achieved.
The poker scene on the train in “The Sting,” the showdown between Steve McQueen and Edward G. Robinson in “The Cincinnati Kid,” the multi-million-dollar game in “Casino Royale” — all filled with glaring missteps.
At his best he seems like the natural heir to the crackling screwball sensibility that powered 1940s classics such as His Girl Friday and The Lady Eve .
There are some slight downfalls of the film such as the ineffective father-daughter subplot that is not properly fleshed out and Kevin Costner is wasted in a role that’s almost akin to William Fichtner’s part in Blades of Glory.
Watching its many false starts and awkward elements, I was reminded of Roger Ebert’s comment about The King of Comedy: “This is a movie that seems ready to explode – but somehow it never does.”
Bloody Sunday (2002)
Directed by Paul Greengrass
influenced The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)
Visuals
My only real problem with “The Trial of the Chicago 7” is that it tells a story that kind of calls out for a slightly bolder and more adventurous treatment than it has been afforded here—it might have been interesting to see what Paul Greengrass, whose films include such true stories as “Bloody Sunday,” “United 93” and “22 July,” might have made of it.
Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba are the Sorkin version of Alec Baldwin, Al Pacino, Ed Harris, et al., knocking Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross” out of the park.
But Sorkin doesn’t pull off what, say, Paddy Chayefsky, in his scripts for such films as “Network” and “The Hospital,” achieved.
A Time to Kill (1996)
Directed by Joel Schumacher
influenced The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)
Themes
As someone who misses the heyday of 90s’ courtroom dramas and devours John Grisham adaptations whether good or bad (“A Time To Kill” remains an all time favorite) watching “The Trial of the Chicago 7” was therapeutic.
We’re given a fascinating peek inside this world, a “Guys and Dolls” of actors, producers, hedge fund managers and — as the film tells us in the beginning when Molly is arrested by a platoon of F.B.I. agents — Russian mobsters and money-launderers.
That’s a strange idea, since after, does Nathan Detroit in the musical “Guys and Dolls,” make a great living by simply providing card sharps with a garage for their game?
The story is a fall of the empire narrative; rags to riches then back to rags — and is broadly reminiscent of Casino or Boogie Nights.
While the transformation isn’t as ridiculous as the Wayans Brothers’ work in something like 2004’s “White Chicks,” Kidman’s uncanny valley look is impossible to ignore.
Comparisons to Erin Brockovich are inevitable and justified, but though Steven Soderbergh's film, which won Julia Roberts an Oscar, tackles bigger social issues, Molly's Gam e is funnier, more emotional and more unusual.
My only real problem with “The Trial of the Chicago 7” is that it tells a story that kind of calls out for a slightly bolder and more adventurous treatment than it has been afforded here—it might have been interesting to see what Paul Greengrass, whose films include such true stories as “Bloody Sunday,” “United 93” and “22 July,” might have made of it.