Martin (John Amplas), a young man who looks around 20-years-old, boards a train in Indianapolis, Indiana for New York. At night, he breaks into a sleeping car and sedates a woman with a syringe full of narcotics. She struggles, but he tells her not to struggle or be upset because she wont feel pain. After a few minutes, the woman falls asleep, and Martin has sex with the unconscious woman. Afterwards, he slices her wrists with a razor blade so he can drink her blood. The woman bleeds to death in her sleep.
In the morning, the train stops in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where Martin disembarks. He is met by Tata Cuda (Lincoln Maazel) an elderly and hostile old man who claims to be his cousin from the Old World. Together, they travel by another train to the town of Braddock, a dying industrial suburb. They walk to Cuda's large house where he shows Martin his living quarters. Cuda then accuses Martin of being an 84-year-old vampire from his old country. He has taken in Martin because he is family, but tells him, "First I will save your soul. Then I shall destroy you." Martin denies being a vampire and implies that Cuda is merely his uncle rather than his cousin. Cuda then puts up strings of garlic on the doors to his and his granddaughter's room, and then holds up a small cross when Martin approaches him. Martin takes away the cross, and even takes a bite of the garlic mocking these attempts by saying bitterly, "There's no real magic... ever". Cuda tells Martin that he can come and go as he pleases. But he also warns Martin that he will kill him if he kills anyone in Braddock. He also tells Martin to stay away from his granddaughter Christine (Christine Forrest), whom arrives home from her job that evening.
Cuda introduces Christine to Martin, but also warns her to stay away from him. But Christine instead strikes up a friendship with Martin who confides in her about his vampire heritage. When Cuda later confirms Martin's claims to be a vampire, Christine, not surprisingly, refuses to believe either one. She thinks that Cuda and the other members of her family have driven Martin to insanity by making him think that he is a vampire. It is never revealed if Martin really is a vampire, or just a shy and lonely youth with troubled issues. Christine is the only person that Martin gets the courage to talk to. When Christine's boyfriend Arthur (Tom Savini) arrives at the house for dinner, Martin stops talking and backs away despite Arthur's attempt at a conversation. Christine later confides in Martin that she hopes to leave Braddock someday with Arthur, even though Martin points out that Arthur treats her badly and is both verbally and physically abusive towards her.
When Christine sees that Martin won't talk to anyone else, she buys him a phone which he installs in his room. Martin begins to repeatingly call a radio talk show where he describes what it's like to be a vampire. He becomes known on the radio as "the Count" to all the listeners. But the patronizing host (Michael Gornick) thinks he's just crazy.
Martin gets a job at Cuda's grocery store of stocking shelves, hauling boxes around, and even gets to be a delivery boy for some of the customers. One of his customers is a certain Abby Santini (Elyane Nadeau), who becomes taken in with Martin. She is a very friendly young woman who is depressed when she tells Martin that her husband is unfaithful. But Martin still does not have the nerve to talk with her, so she is happy to have someone to confide in with her life problems. Martin phones the radio show host to describe his infatuation with the housewife and senses that she wants to have sex with him. When the radio show host asks Martin if it is a sexual problem that he has involving women criticizing him during sex, Martin replies that he has never had sex with a woman who was awake.
One day, Martin travels by train to outside Braddock to look for victims. At a supermarket, he follows a young woman (Sarah Venable) home to her posh suburban house. He sees the woman's husband (Richard Rubenstein) leave for a long business trip, and Martin decides this would be the right time for more feeding. Martin returns to the house after dark and breaks in through the garage door. But it is Martin who gets the surprise when he bursts into her bedroom to find her in bed with her adulterous lover Lewis (Al Levitsky). After a vicious struggle, Martin jabs both of them with hyprodermic needles with narcotics, and waits for the drugs to take affect. He drags the unconscious body of Lewis from the house to a clump of trees across the street where he kills him by shoving a broken tree branch into his neck and drinks his blood. Martin returns to the house where he has sex with the unconscious woman. But out of compassion and pity, he decides to let her live.
Martin begins to have romantic monochrome visions of his vampire past (real or imagined), where he drained blood from a young woman and was chased through the streets of a nameless European town by a torch-lit mob.
During one Sunday at church, Cuda brings home Father Howard (George A. Romero) who asks him about the possibility of exorcism and demon possession. Father Howard calls upon the elderly Father Zulemans (Clifford Forrest, Jr.) over at Cuda's request. Together, Cuda and Zulemans confront Martin his bedroom and attempt to perform an exorcism on him. At this point, Martin remembers (another real or imaginary flashback), in the Old Country of people trying to perform an exorcism on him, and he flees them. Martin then flees from Cuda and Zuelmas as well. A little later that night, Martin terrorizes Cuda in a children's playground when he puts on a Dracula cape and puts false fangs into his mouth to pretend that he really is a vampire.
One day, Martin finally musters the courage to talk with Mrs. Santini during a routine delivery to her house where he tells her that he's aware of her attempts to seduce him and wants now to have sex with her. After having sex for the first time, Mrs. Santini becomes more depressed for she tells Martin that her husband just left her because she discovered that she cannot bear children, and that her desires towards him are based on sex and nothing else. But Martin wants to stay with her and help her move on with her life. Martin tells the radio show host about his affair with the housewife and that he no longer has the urge to attack other women.
Meanwhile, Arthur meets with Cuda and tells him that he wants Christine to leave town with him so they can get married and start a family. But Christine becomes angry at Cuda when he tells Arthur that insanity runs in their family and he shouldn't consider having children with her. Shortly afterwards, Christine packs up and leaves Braddock for New York with Arthur despite Martin telling her that Arthur is abusive towards her. But her mind is made up. Before leaving, Christine tells Martin that she really has no ill feelings towards him and just wants to make a fresh start with her life. She says goodbye to him and promises to write. But Martin knows that with an abusive and possessive man in Christine's life, she probably won't.
Depressed over losing his one true friend, Martin phones the radio show host and tells him that he's getting "shaky" and wants to go out looking for more victims. That night, Martin travels to a rough crime-ridden area of Pittsburgh and attacks two derelicts in a alley, injecting them with narcotics. He kills one of them by silting the bum's wrist and drinking his blood. Martin is about to kill the second one when a police car shows up and gives chase. Martin narrowly escapes during a long chase on foot which leads from the garbage strew streets and through a local store. Martin runs into an old warehouse where a drug deal is going down. A shootout between the two cops and the three thugs begins where all of them are killed, leaving Martin as the sole survivor who casually walks away from the carnage.
One day, Martin finds Mrs. Santini dead in her bathtub, after she had slit her writs with a razor blade. Martin anonymously calls the police to report the body and leaves. He phones the radio show host one final time to say that he really doesn't need friends or people to talk to for he is his own person. But when Cuda learns about Mrs. Santini's suicide, is mistakenly thinks Martin killed her and made it look like a suicide as he's done before. Cuda walks into Martin's room while he is asleep and kills him by hammering a wooden stake through Martin's heart.
Cuda buries Martin's body in his back garden, while over the closing credits various voices from people are heard talking to the radio show host asking the whereabouts of "the Count".
编排完美，歌舞和这种题材太搭了，让人激情昂扬。只有在困境中才能看出一个地方的素质，是否能考虑到尽可能多的情况，关心少数群体，保护动物，人们互相帮助载歌载舞，这才是人性的闪光之处。女机长的独唱更是激励人心。
8.0 索金就像电影中那些接受审判的活动家们，他以文本的力量纪录着一切的不堪与罪恶，及其夹缝之间片歇许美丽，描绘出了六十年代复杂又混乱的派系，尤其是对嬉皮士改观了不少;同时这也是警示着当下的世界政坛，那些偏见与错误又在卷土重来。即使影像调度再平庸，群像表演层次不齐，有这样的剧本力度也就可以渲染出无限的情绪了，而且也能看出索金从他合作过的那些导演中偷学了不少剪辑，也致使最终的结果也是足以振奋人心的，在震耳欲聋的“whole world's watching”口号中加入这场未尽的斗争。（查了下wiki，发现Tom Hayden居然是Jane Fonda的前夫，感觉破次元壁了。）
灯塔国的法律系统，大家懂得。找10名完全不懂法律的陪审员来审判，这里头学问可多了，可以用来逃脱法律，也可以用来操纵法律。
一切的不公，至少还可以说出来。另外，美国警察的所作所为，看来和政体的意志是一致的。
political trial的论点很有趣。扣一是去看了原本事件的页面，只能说电影完整还原了，并没有太大的发挥空间。
剪辑很好，简洁有力，干净利落地向观众交代清楚了复杂时代下的复杂事件，体现了好莱坞的工业水准。但是我并不是很能共情这些被审判的人，也许在历史事实上他们的遭遇确实有引人义愤的一面，可当他们的事迹进入文化工业，成为好莱坞在选战中的手榴弹，那么他们的角色和他们自身就都已经变成了工具人。
“永葆热爱，永怀善良，永远温柔”仍然是我们面对残酷最好的武器。
一出主题模糊的庭辩题材电影硬是拍成了一出闹剧。玩归玩闹归闹，这么多年下来，反倒只有喧闹的legal high展示出了庭辩策略。
索金的电影应该叫speech film：完全靠对话驱动、用对话衔接镜头、以对话为主要甚至唯一动作的电影。本片尤其明显的是一个场景常剪在人物一句话说到半截再由下个场景中的人物完成这个句子，用言语的对比、延伸和重复制造speech montage，而其余音效（杯子响、掌声、法槌、摔门声）都是不间断的台词间为数不多的标点。配乐则无足轻重，本片中只有类似警民冲突这种不以可辨识对话为核心的短暂场景中作为不易察觉的低音和声存在（《社交网络》就不会这样）。好在speech正是法庭的特征和公民不服从的内核，话语权的争夺成为影片最直观（闻）的戏剧冲突，所有情感调动也皆由与话语和话语权相关的剧情点燃起。缺点是本片成了大型mansplain六十年代精神现场，这种对speech的迷恋和索金所代表的白男局限进步政治简直一体两面。
精致的剧本是本片最大看点。面对一场长达五个月、复杂且琐碎的庭审，要在俩小时里编织成一个戏剧实在不易，但索金完全做到了，把庭审、庭外和前情三条线做了不落窠臼的精妙穿插，好几场平行剪辑戏的台词写得漂亮极了！编剧还有意弱化了最容易调动观众情绪的暴动戏，有意略去了当年请金斯伯格等名人出庭作证的噱头。可惜索金的导演功力还是欠火候，否则这片就是又一部精彩绝伦的《社交网络》！
是左派民权运动的宣言电影，也是好莱坞顶级工业化作品（当然不是特效的那种顶级工业）。手法不新鲜但就是快、准、狠，用真实影像与电影场景缝合虚拟与历史，用唇枪舌战的台词在刀锋般的剪辑下打出一套组合拳，再将政治诉求泄于当下的银幕内外。去年两部历史题材电影都以念人名收尾，都是强压着眼泪看完。
u1s1，4k大屏比电脑屏舒服太多🚬
Life goes on. 有的时候就想逃避一切什么都不管了，孤独也是真的
动画纪录片《Chicago 10》的“洁版”，不洁的是无政府主义、反资本主义、切格瓦拉等等，你懂的，居然把Abbie Hoffman变成了一个爱国者，为了最后读名字的桥段把智多星Rennie Davis安排成了呆呆的小学生，把游行者的红旗变成了星条旗，把男卧底变成美人计等等等等。还循环利用了好多Law & Order，The West Wing...的台词，不遗余力地向自己致敬。索金唯一值得称赞的创意是：片中的大多数警察都是芝加哥警察局的真警察演的，也就是说，他们大概率在去年演完了1968年摘掉警徽打平民的警察之后，今年又在现实中在芝加哥街头做了类似的工作。另外演员都很棒。
从头到尾人物都是不稳定的，除了法官是彻头彻尾的让人讨厌；事件切碎成好几个叙述者花式叙述，也没让我感觉到有更深入的效果；可能缺乏对美国历史和政治体系的理解，除了歧视黑人和反对人权让我热血喷张青筋暴起以外，本片的结尾并不如辩护人般震撼人心
艾伦·索金真是一如既往，带着精雕细琢的自我观点全力输出，但是我吃他这套~
20201025 60年代再次被当代世界所“审判”，不过这次却是在一个真正的白左的视角之中，同时必须放置在和2020年的对话关系里。艾伦索金讲故事的才能也尽可能呈现了一个多元，异质甚至是芜杂的社会状况，而将主人公定位为汤姆海登而非阿比霍夫曼，更非黑豹党，看看日后几人的政治生命，这无疑也是索金的政治声明——需要通过体制内部的变革，而非颠覆体制的革命，来实现社会正义。而这又成为了Mark Lilla式的，给民主党人在这个节骨眼上的喊话，也缩写了60年代运动的丰富内涵。两场戏印象深刻，一扇玻璃隔开60和50两个时代瞬间让人穿越回《罗马》里家具店那场戏，只不过这次视角被难能可贵地放在了街道上；片尾的反高潮，用念白而非长篇大论，以历史作为最强有力的证言，不落俗套，正是索金的过人之处。
好喜欢！百老汇实力真牛
8.0准确无误地拍出了这个剧本，但也被其束缚，不过文本本身所具有的能量足够强大。调度并不平庸，但只是做到了可以做到的——匠气十足的人物/权利关系网（带着压迫的法官位置逐渐被群众压下）。
司法、制度和文化的差异，必然会影响我们对片中所争论的“美国价值观”的理解。但无论怎么理解，“美国价值观”都是可以被质疑的价值观，正如片中精彩的法庭戏所展示的那样。显然，这不是每个地方所宣扬的价值观都能做到的。光是对待自己国家在上世纪六七十年代的历史这点，美国电影可以一拍再拍，而有些地方的这段历史只存在于历史书轻描淡写的几页文字上，对于这些地方的人来说，上世纪六七十年代是缺失的，这种缺失必然又会反过来影响他们理解这部影片，理解现代国家。（最后，不得不说，被告站起来读越战死亡名单时，我被感动哭了。
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