You don’t have to know a lot about the actual history that inspired Netflix’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 to get the sense that Aaron Sorkin’s version softens, tames, and fictionalizes these wild events of the late 1960s.

Sorkin starts by capturing various members of the seven — actually eight, including cofounder of the Black Panther Party Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) — right before the 1968 Democratic National Convention, allowing you to see in broad strokes just how different their politics are. Then it skips the chaos of the convention itself to take us right into the courtroom where they’ve been hauled up on absurdly punitive charges of conspiracy and incitement to riot. And why skip straight to the courtroom? Because that way, while people are testifying, you can cut to dramatic flashbacks of cops teargassing and beating demonstrators.

Sorkin is an old hand at creating crowd-pleasing dramas centered around trials. He got his start with A Few Good Men (first the play version, then the 1992 film). Then in 2018, his stage adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird broke box office records for a non-musical play with $1.5 million in the opening week alone plus $22 million in advance ticket sales.