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".
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。
Davis 本人对索金的人物塑造持保留意见 缺点或者说窠臼还是有不少的 但让我个人兴奋的 reference 也是不少(别再吹 Eric Clapton 了 Ginger Baker 比他好到不知那里去了) 结尾的煽动性和喊话够直接 —— The Whole World Is Watching 但同时也要看到：Of course, there are very decent police officers in every state but the systemic racism in the police department just can’t be denied. 好歹是本方队友加一分鼓励吧 希望索金还是意识一下自己太白了的缺点 这种白化简直是可怜了的骑墙感
教科书级别的剪辑，以及这一大票演员的出色演出
又是五星新片，但和共同透露新方法的前几部不同，这是旧方法最后的夺目余晖。我的评价标准在近期几近重建：因为相比电影的本体性，接下来的十年很可能都需要更在乎载体性——电影作为通道，从来没有这么危险过；电影作为艺术，从来没有这么重要过。什么是表象权威，什么是根本权威，什么是“一条线”，什么是NPC，什么是辩证的力量（血？谁的血？），我会常常用这部电影来警醒我和我们的。
索金教科书级的表现，虽然开头信息量太满，调度技巧也略显单调，但是公审闪回带出民运过程的叙事手段是索金拿手好戏了。愤怒的民运如何走向暴力，公权力如何使用权力打压异议迫使对方使用暴力，也在2个小时里用一种通俗好懂的形式讲清楚了。在一个全球局势风起云涌的时代，这部电影来得太及时，用一个60年代的故事证明了历史是周期性行进的。
美国电影行业对社会话题的敏感度和创作的速度还是很令人佩服的
不懂历史，但是作为电影，文学剧本和拍摄手法都相当好啊。因为主要场景是庭审，所以有几处闪回，时空切换的处理方式每次都有新意，比较喜欢的是Fred Hampton被害时的相机快门声串起的两个时空，冷酷的机器声音和活着的人的惊恐，就连起了两个时空。还喜欢Bobby Seales质问Tom Hayden时说的话，你们都有同一个父亲。我太爱Allan Sorkin写的剧了
“你是否蔑视你的政府？”“相比政府对我的蔑视，我的蔑视不值一提。”借古讽今得恰到好处，无论是80年代的中国，早两年的香港，还是隔三差五的欧美，什么样的社会结构，这种故事都会存在。艾伦·索金标志性的连珠炮台词，犀利铿锵，一层层的把情绪推进到结案陈词的顶点，一个个名字念出来真是燃动人心。★★★★☆
以前反战，现在反川，以后反呼吸，美国因为能容许这些人蹦跶而美
5.1 这部电影的台词直接可以出一本语录了。节奏很好，两个小时非常政治的电影却一点也不觉得让人着急。我本以为是一个悲壮的历史正剧，结果却是一出抓马，但是该讨论到的东西一点没有少，并且结尾真的很煽情！！！
在听到大家唱歌的时候我没哭。只是看到大家在经历灾难之后，仍然笑着交谈的时候，我就泪流满面。
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。
法庭戏➕艾伦·索金的剧本，字幕已经看不过来。全世界都在看：有些人在推翻，有些人在伪装。
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。
托尼奖获奖百老汇音乐剧《来自远方》被改编成电影。影片取自9.11当天加拿大甘德镇接纳了6600名意外迫降的旅客，并共处了3天的美好时光。世界大同，却又大而不同。既有9.11的恐袭，又有甘德镇无私的义举。在舞台上的演员，轮流切换着不同的身份，居民或是乘客，落叶聚还散，寒鸦栖复惊。
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
终于有人接住了示威者扔来的鸡蛋，替我圆梦了！
索金的剧本确实很好，电影三段式地一点一点铺垫奠基，配乐搭配得很好，情绪氛围慢慢达到高涨，戛然而止。
疫情看真的太应景了。黑暗中才更能看到善意的光。太温暖了。
第一次听到Me and the Sky 还没get全部歌词就哭了，从此记住了这部剧。这次看官摄，从第一首歌里we will not be killed那里就开始哭。疫情后去剧场看的人应该和我一样吧。也希望有一天中国也会有感动全世界的作品，我们经历的也应该让全世界记得。最后，希望巡演赶快重启吧！我要进剧场看！
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