The creator of 'The West Wing' and writer of 'A Few Good Men' and 'The Social Network' has a great ear for dialogue and an instinctive nose for combative drama.
His work always delivers scene chewing moments and his TV and movie output akways screams awards contender.
So it comes as no surprise that his second outing as a director, 'The Trial of the Chicago Seven' has attracted a heavyweight cast.
Joseph Gordon Levitt, Michael Keaton, Mark Rylance, Eddie Redmayne, Sacha Baron Cohen, Frank Langella, John Carroll Lynch, John Doman and Jeremy Strong are all accomplished actors with little to prove.
In Sorkin's directorial follow-up to 'Molly's Game', they simply lap up every word and milk it dry.
The trial of the Chicago Seven in 1969 was one of those landmark moments where the cracks in the USA's political discourse were on full display.
Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines and Lee Weiner were indicted along with Black Panther leader Bobby Seale for conspiracy and incitement to riot following the anti-Vietnam War protests and riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
It was a moment when the divisions between American Conservatives and Liberals were brought into sharp focus.
The establishment butted up against the Counterculture of the 1969s in the most bruising way.
And in the end, the actions of the forces of law and order and the American judiciary came under intense international scrutiny.
Sorkin's take on the Chicago Seven story doesn't miss its relevance to the American culture wars of today.
With US voters about to choose two very different visions of America offered by the Republicans and the Democrats, by Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy versus Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, by Donald Trump and Mike Pence against Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, Sorkin uses the story to shine a harsh light on issues that remain very relevant today.
Intolerance of other views, police brutality and institutional racism, wild right wing conspiracy theories and a disregard for civil liberties, left wing idealism versus pragmatic centrism all get an airing in Netflix's movie.
And in typical Sorkin fashion, his talk-fest is delivered with pace, with passion, with wit and with a strong dose of US liberal, tub thumping idealism.
'The Trial of the Chicago Seven' begins with the suggestion that John Doman's Attorney General in President Nixon administration John N Mitchell pursued a show trial against the Seven because he felt sleighted by his predecessor Ramsey Clark.
This contention is questionable but Clark's decision not to pursue a case against the left wing and Counterculture activists involved in the Chicago riots was the focus of a lot of criticism by Nixon during his successful Presidential campaign against Hubert Humphrey.
In Sorkin's version of the story, Mitchell, angry that Michael Keaton's Clark did not resign until an hour before his confirmation, informs Joseph Gordon Levitt's prosecutor Richard Schultz and JC Mackenzie's Thomas Foran, in a Trumpian flash of bruised ego and pettiness, that he wants them to take on a case that his predecessor was not willing to chase.
He also expects them to win but at what cost?
Sorkin fast forwards to the trial itself with the sYouth International Party duo of Sacha Baron Cohen's Hoffman and Jeremy Strong's Rubin arriving at the courthouse to chants from supporters that the eyes of the world are on the trial and opponents demanding they be locked up.
Inside the courthouse, Rubin manages to catch an egg thrown at them without breaking it and soon we are plunged into the sheer theatricality of the trial.
Hoffman, Rubin, Dellinger, Hayden, Davis, Froines and Weiner are represented by Mark Rylance's William Kunstler and Ben Shenkman's Leonard Weinglass.
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II's Bobby Seale, however, is unrepresented for much of the trial, with his attorney unable to attend due to illness.
This does not sway Frank Langella's haughty Judge Julius Hoffman who ignores his pleas for a separate trial.
Throughout the trial, he not only ignores Seale's appeals for representation but repeatedly shows contempt for the other defendants and hands out contempt of court charges like Halloween candy.
Kunstler and Weinglass also fall foul of the judge as their efforts to expose the prosecution as a show trial are constantly undermined.
Judge Hoffman strikes from the record cross-examination by Kunstler of one city official and incredivby refuses to allow testimony by Clark before a jury.
He even orders Seale to be gagged during proceedings.
In return, Abbie Hoffman and Rubin make a mockery of the proceedings, even donning judges' robes in a mock tribute.
Seale frequently interrupts proceedings to demand his rights.
John Carroll Lynch's pacifist David Dellinger loses his cool at one point and strikes a marshall of the court.
Outside the courtroom, the defendants also clash about their approach to the trial.
Eddie Redmayne's Tom Hayden is portrayed as a centrist and the voice of reason, believing Hoffman and Rubin's antics and their general disrespect for the proceedings are undermining their efforts to convince some of the jury not to convict.
Sorkin also flits between the testimony in the court to recreations of the events that led to the eight defendants' indictment.
Indeed, some of the most incendiary moments of his drama are the reenactments of the clashes in Lincoln Park, Grant Park and the Conrad Hilton.
'The Trial of the Chicago Seven' nevertheless finds Sorkin on familiar ground.
Courtroom dramas have been meat and drink for much of his career.
After all, this was the writer who pitted Tom Cruise against Jack Nicholson in Rob Reiner's movie of his hit Broadway military court martial drama 'A Few Good Men'.
His screenplay for David Fincher's 2010 Facebook drama 'The Social Network' featured the cut and thrust of a court deposition involving Jesse Eisenberg's Mark Zuckerberg.
Sorkin's directorial debut in 2017, 'Molly's Game' was fashioned around Idris Elba's attorney Charlie Jaffey's efforts to defend Jessica Chastain's Molly Bloom against charges of running illegal gambling rackets for Mobsters.
The writer-director also famously adapted on Broadway Harper Lee's 'To Kill A Mockingbird' in 2018, with Jeff Daniels as Atticus Finch.
So it is fair to say he knows his way around a courtroom drama and how to let his cast shine.
And they do indeed shine.
Rylance is wonderful as Kunstler, struggling to keep his calm in the cauldron of the courtroom as his attempts to defend his clients are constantly undermined.
Gordon Levitt imbues Schultz with a deep sense of integrity, as the prosecutor from time to time bristles at the treatment of the defendants.
Baron Cohen turns in his most impressive performance as an actor to date as Abbie Hoffman, striking the right balance between earnest drama and comic relief.
Fans of Adam McKay's 'The Big Short' and HBO's Emmy award-winning 'Succession' know Strong is a very astute actor and he treads the same path as Baron Cohen with great ease.
Carroll Lynch further cements his reputation as a solid supporting actor as the earnest pacifist Dellinger, while Alex Sharp, Noah Robbins and Daniel Flaherty certainly do their bit as Davis, Weiner and Froines.
Redmayne brings an appropriate level of earnestness to the role of Hayden.
Abdul-Mateen II is engafing as Seale and is complemented by Kelvin Harrison Jr as his Black Panther comrade Fred Hampton.
Doman crackles with belligerence as Mitchell, JC Mackenzie is suitably fawning as Foran, Shenkman proves a good foil for Rylance as Weinglass and there is an eye catching turn by Caitlin FitzGerald as an FBI agent who infiltrates the Chicago protests by seducing Rubin.
Keaton is also terrific value as Ramsey Clark - especially when his character is in the witness box.
However the scene stealing performance of the movie belongs to Langella.
Portraying Judge Hoffman as pompous, cackhanded, pig headed and far from impartial, Langella relishes every moment and he milks them for all their worth.
With the bulk of the action taking place in court or in consultation, 'The Trial of the Chicago Seven' naturally feels theatrical.
However Sorkin gets a chance to show his capabilities as a director in the sequences recreating the protests and the violence that erupted in Chicago around the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
And while it may not be the most visually striking movie you will see this year, 'The Trial of the Chicago Seven' is dazzlingly edited by Alan Baumgarten who weaves archive news footage into the recreation of real events with all the panache of an Oliver Stone movie.
Inevitably, in an attempt to bring the story to the screen in a two hour film, Sorkin has had to foreground some aspects of the trial, downplay others and taken some artistic licence.
However only the most pedantic would quibble with his decision in one scene to have Rubin and Abbie Hoffman wear policemen's uniforms under the judges robes outfits the duo don in court.
Dellinger never struck a marshall during the trial which is done purely for dramatic purposes.
As in Jim Sheridan's 'In the Name of the Father,' sometimes the dramatic licence softens the harsh reality.
Sorkin depicts Seale being gagged and handcuffed to a chair after he swears at Judge Hoffman.
The reality was worse.
Seale was punished after objecting to the judge's denial of his request to cross-examine witnesses and comparing his behaviour to that of a slave owner.
The beating of Rennie Davis by the Chicago police was also worse than portrayed in the film, with him being hospitalised for concussion and moved around the hospital to avoid to avoid another confrontation with the cops.
The trial was notable for the flurry of celebrity counterculture figures who testified on behalf of the defendants.
Allen Ginsburg, Timothy Leary, Joni Mitchell, Arlo Guthrie, William Styrin and Dick Gregory all took the stand but, understandably, for the sake of compressing a lot into a two hour film, Sorkin has sacrificed that aspect of the trial.
'The Trial of the Chicago Seven' is a typicaly absorbing, politically charged drama from one of Hollywood's best screenwriters.
However the fact that Sorkin's movie has been off-loaded by Paramount to Netflix tells you all you need to know about the studio system today.
Hollywood studios simply can no longer handle serious tentpole dramas of this kind and are fixated with making billions on special effects laden franchise movies.
As tentpole dramas go, 'The Trial of the Chicago Seven' is among the best you will see this year.
It may not be the most cinematic film but it certainly packs a powerful political punch.
And that punch reverberates from 1968 right through to the choice facing American voters this November.
Fair play to Netflix for providing a limited cinema release and then the platform for Sorkin to aim that punch.
The question is: will audiences be sufficiently moved to repair the societal problems that dogged the US then and still dogs it now?
('The Trial of the Chicago Seven' opened in US cinemas on September 25, 2020 and was made available for streaming on Netflix on October 16, 2020)
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