Chicago 10: Critic Reviews

Chicago 10 is well worth seeing, if only because a good half of the film is devoted to extraordinary footage of the four days of rage that spawned the trial.

Chicago 10, Brett Morgen's semi-animated, semi-documentary attempt to make the '60s cool for a new generation of kids, does the opposite.

A cacophony of sights and sounds and a disjointed narrative dilute the message.

Chicago 10 not only brings to life one of the sorriest chapters in American cultural and political history, but breathes new life into a film genre that usually has all the imagination and verve of a visit to Madame Tussauds.

The movie dazzles us into self-examination.

However authentically chaotic, Chicago 10 is insufficiently frenzied. For all its shock value, the trial was not the only game in town.

A provocative reflection of its rule-breaking subjects, Brett Morgen's political documentary re-examines the past while drawing unmissable parallels to the present.

A vibrant, unconventional documentary about the conspiracy trial of the so-called inciters of the riots that occurred during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

As an activist documentary with a contemporary agenda, it doesn't pretend to be "objective" (whatever that means), but to find inspiration in the passion and irreverence of its heroes.

Morgen's best achievement is the news footage, more detailed looks at events outside the Conrad Hilton Hotel and in Chicago parks than you typically see on TV rehashes.

An electrifying picture.

Given the filmmaker's privileged perspective of hindsight, to notconsider the real-world repercussions of their theater, to not connect the dots between 1968 and 2008 is a squandered opportunity.

If you accept the premise that it's a multimedia happening rather than a history lesson, the half-documentary, half-cartoon Chicago 10 is a smash of a mash-up. Call it 1968, the Remix.

It wouldn't hurt anyone, young or old, to catch up on the fascinating history lesson illustrated and embellished by Mr. Morgen and his crew in Chicago 10.

Brett Morgen's agit-prop documentary augments its excellent assemblage of archival footage with capture-motion animation to rep the courtroom antics, all in the service of an ideologically loaded approach.

In eschewing the use of a narrator or talking heads, Morgen leaves out too much crucial information.

Chicago 10 is that nearly perfect marriage of style -- edgy, different -- to documentary subject: 1968, that seminal year so celebrated in 2008 for changing the America that came after it.

In its best moments, and they are considerable, Chicago 10 makes you see 1968, that near-apocalyptic year, with fresh eyes, as an extraordinary turning point in history now at least partly set free from boomer nostalgia and regret.

His political heart is in the right place but Brett Morgen can't connect the '60s anti-war movement to the political counter-culture from which it sprung.

The director wants to bring recent history to life for people who weren't around to witness it, and in that he succeeds pretty admirably.

Chicago 10 is definitely worth a look for skeptics young and old.

It may be most effective for audiences who do need a spoonful of sugar to make the historical medicine go down.

Revisits 1968 as a court room drama, through a fresh cinematic look to avoid period cliches while broadening history's appeal to both boomers and their children.