Chicago 10 (film)

Chicago 10: Speak Your Peace is a 2007 American animated documentary written and directed by Brett Morgen that tells the story of the Chicago Eight. The film features the voices of Hank Azaria, Dylan Baker, Nick Nolte, Mark Ruffalo, Roy Scheider, Liev Schreiber, James Urbaniak, and Jeffrey Wright in an animated reenactment of the trial based on transcripts and rediscovered audio recordings. It also contains archival footage of Abbie Hoffman, David Dellinger, William Kunstler, Jerry Rubin, Bobby Seale, Tom Hayden, and Leonard Weinglass, and of the protest and riot itself. The title is drawn from a quote by Rubin, who said, "Anyone who calls us the Chicago Seven is a racist. Because you're discrediting Bobby Seale. You can call us the Chicago Eight, but really we're the Chicago Ten, because our two lawyers went down with us."[2]

Chicago 10
Promotional poster
Directed byBrett Morgen
Produced byGraydon Carter
Brett Morgen
Written byBrett Morgen
StarringHank Azaria
Dylan Baker
Nick Nolte
Mark Ruffalo
Roy Scheider
Liev Schreiber
James Urbaniak
Jeffrey Wright
Music byJeff Danna
Edited byStuart Levy
Production
company
Consolidated Documentaries
Participant Productions
River Road Entertainment
Curious Pictures
Distributed byRoadside Attractions
Release date
  • January 18, 2007 (2007-01-18) (Sundance)
Running time
110 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Box office$177,490[1]

Plot

In 1968, a group of protestors got together to protest the Vietnam War where their actions led to their arrest and trial.

Cast

Production

On the eve of the Afghanistan War, director Brett Morgen was spurred to create Chicago 10 in response to what he saw as the lack of active American opposition to the war. Morgen wanted to make the anti-Vietnam War protests of the 1960s resonate with contemporary youth, which influenced both the film's animation style and its anachronistic soundtrack, the latter of which features modern artists such as Black Sabbath, Rage Against the Machine, the Beastie Boys, and Eminem. The animated courtroom sequences were also informed by Jerry Rubin's description of the trial as a "cartoon show."[3]

Release

The film premiered January 18, 2007 at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. It later premiered at Silverdocs, the AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival in Downtown Silver Spring, Maryland. The film opened in limited release in the United States on February 29, 2008. It was aired nationally on the PBS program, Independent Lens, on October 22, 2008.[4][5]

Critical reception

Chicago 10 received generally favorable reviews from critics. As of June 2020, the film holds an 81% approval rating on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 84 reviews with an average rating of 6.74/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "Brett Morgan's half-animated, half-documentary film is an arresting, sometimes visionary portrait of the historic and chaotic trial."[6] Metacritic reported the film had a weighted average score of 69 out of 100, based on 24 reviews.[7]

The film was nominated for Best Documentary Screenplay from the Writers Guild of America.[8]

See also

References
  1. Chicago 10 at Box Office Mojo
  2. Meyer, Graham (January 24, 2008). "Long Time Coming". Chicago Magazine. Retrieved December 29, 2016.
  3. "Chicago 10: Press Materials". Participant Media. Archived from the original on January 31, 2013. Retrieved December 10, 2012.
  4. "Independent Lens . CHICAGO 10 | PBS". www.pbs.org. Retrieved September 17, 2017.
  5. "Chicago 10 | ITVS". Retrieved September 17, 2017.
  6. "Chicago 10 - Movie Reviews, Trailers, Pictures - Rotten Tomatoes". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved June 23, 2020.
  7. "Chicago 10 (2008): Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved April 11, 2010.
  8. Finke, Nikki (January 7, 2009). "2009 WGA Awards Screen Nominees". Deadline. Retrieved February 20, 2019.
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