STUDIO: Paramount
RELEASE DATE: August 26, 2008
STARRING: (The Voices of) Hank Azaria, Dylan Baker, Nick Nolte, Mark Ruffalo, Roy Scheider, Liev Schreiber, and Jeffrey Wright
WRITTEN BY: Brett Morgen
DIRECTED BY: Brett Morgen
FEATURES: Chicago 10 Remix Video Contest Winner
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Protest is one of the things that makes me proud to be an American. Our government's often-violent response to protest provokes the opposite response. In other words, Brett Morgen's excellent documentary Chicago 10 was a rollercoaster. This is no ordinary documentary. Not only is the subject matter more prescient than Abbie Hoffman could have ever imagined, as it's hitting DVD during the convention season of a wartime election, but you really have never seen a doc quite like Chicago 10. This unusual, creative flick could qualify for both Best Animated Feature and Best Documentary at next year's Oscars. What Morgen ingeniously did was to take the court transcripts from the trial of the Chicago 7 and reenact them with animation and brilliant voice actors like Hank Azaria, Jeffrey Wright, and more. What emerges is a combination of actual, documentary footage and an animated reenactment that is one of the fastest 90 minutes you'll see on DVD this year. It's highly stylized, riveting, and emotionally powerful. It's a must-see.

Forty years ago, in the summer of 1968, the United States was an incendiary place to live. The Vietnam War was at its peak and one of the most important leaders of all time, Martin Luther King, had just been assassinated. The divide between the powerful and the powerless was turning into a deadly chasm. A growing tension between the "hippies" and the "establishment" felt like it could turn deadly at any moment and when the Democratic Convention was scheduled for the summer in Chicago, the time felt right for a conflict. Several young, charismatic leaders of the anti-War movement, including Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, mobilized their forces to head to the Windy City. The very presence of hippies hanging in Lincoln Park and practicing free love sent Mayor Daley and the organizers of the Convention on their heels. They prepared for riots. Personally, I think if a city's police force prepares for weeks for riots, they turn it into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Near the end of the convention, the prophecy came true and Hoffman, Rubin, and six others, including Black Panther Bobby Seale, who had next to nothing to do with the event, were put on trial for inciting to riot. Morgen mixes newsreel and documentary footage with motion-capture animation to tell this riveting story of an embarrassment of power and our legal system one more time.

The tagline for Chicago 10 really says it all - "The convention was drama. The trial was comedy." The trial of Hoffman, Rubin, Seale, and others is such a dramatically rich and ridiculous story that it's been a hot prospect for a narrative feature film for years. Seale was bound and gagged by the court after speaking out too many times. The judge was ridiculously biased. Rubin and Hoffman showed up in judge's robes one day. Hoffman and Rubin went to Chicago to show how insanely narrow-minded the establishment had become. They never could have imagined that they would have to get into a courtroom to do so.

My love for the subject matter of Chicago 10 is clear and the true story alone (and the excellent voice work) make the film a must-see. Having said that, Chicago 10 can be a bit too cluttered. Morgen jumps back and forth between newsreel footage and the animated recreations, most of which is scored with loud protest music like Rage Against the Machine, and the pace can become overwhelming. Yes, Chicago 10 is that rarest of things in the typically slow documentary genre - too frenetically paced. But it's a minor complaint. It's a daring, risky, challenging, and important documentary. Many people have asked where the Hoffmans and Rubins of 2008 have been during this campaign? Maybe they've been waiting to see something that inspired them to act. Maybe they've been waiting to see Chicago 10.

(Note: Paramount should be ashamed of releasing a DVD with 2 minutes of special features. The "Remix Video Contest Winner" is just a variation on the trailer. No extra footage? No behind-the-scenes look at the process that made such an unusual film? Come on. I'm going to start a protest.)