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".
节奏非常好 最后一场戏的余味让我这两天跑步一直在想
我算了一下一个名字五秒，四千多个名字要念六个多小时呢。
好莱坞电影还是厉害，只要反抗了就是胜利，只要上了庭都能成为英雄，无论实际情况多么的微薄、无力甚至错误。最后结尾的戏剧性设计也不错，当时才五千多人，其实越战结束美国一共死了8万多人，应该都读完后再ending……不，还得加上两百多万的越南军民。
既工整纯熟，又曲折激情。Sorkin 就适合制作这类历史性或纪实性强的片子，节奏感好的一批。4.5星。
here are their names.
Love can make us alive
本来应该四星的，对白推进蒙太奇太不招人喜欢，台词太密，细节太略。但是Bobby Seale被court order gag的那场戏太精彩，一动一静，交织的太妙。而且SBC真的太圈粉了，正戏political satire样样都行。最后一幕真的被成功催泪了，大晚上的要哭晕在被窝了。The world is watching。连Aaron Sorkin算是温和的democrat都吹了集结号了。要还有四年Trump真是要血雨腥风啊！
看完之后又去回顾了下911事件 窒息和难受
截止到今天的年度最佳。“酒吧外是20世纪60年代，酒吧内是20世纪50年代”，“是不是只有七个人带着十万卧底cop在抗议？”，还有被枪杀的黑豹党成员都太印象深刻
用一个词来形容就是平庸，剧情平庸，叙事平庸，演员平庸，里朗斯和小雀斑、囧瑟夫基本没什么发挥空间，反倒法官施展的比较尽兴。不过这类写实的片子意义大于内容，看过的好多基本都是这个水准。
Aaron Sorkin的剧本一如既往的精彩，看得我热血沸腾，庭审辩论和游行闪回间的转接如行云流水，这剪辑也太强了！结尾有种虽败犹荣的自豪感，看着Tom Hayden念名字的时候，我禁不住落泪。这片子正好在2020年上映，也是独具时代意义的。
近年来左派电影高峰，三观淋漓，结构紧凑，剪辑犀利，信息密度极大。整部电影就如同俯冲轰炸般发人深省，岂止是美国，整个世界都在经历一个新的60年代。
我们不悲观，憧憬着2035吧，前两天的公报说那时的中国也将建成法治国家、法治政府、法治社会…
场景角色无缝衔接，太精致了。
四星半，看哭了，想到很多事，说不出话，说不出话。不想去谈论那些关于什么电影技巧，导演技法，文本是否盖过视听，不想谈，因为没有意义。“—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。”起了一身鸡皮疙瘩。
随审判来临新闻剪辑的狂欢演变成一场持续150多天的马拉松…为游行权利冲突、陪审团变成空椅子、嘲弄揶揄法官已经证明了这就是一场政治秀， 当下应景的BLM抗议和总统选举的喧闹只是在提醒“不要忘重复的历史”
应景是一回事，但如果艾伦索金最拿手的台词没有起到作用，那么他就会显得相当平庸，结尾强起的bgm印证了这种无力。除了萨沙的艾比霍夫曼外人物都颇单薄。“把一件事情说明白了”可算不上什么像样的标准。
他们的平民团结可以带来正义或者改变，不论输赢，起码曾经为之抗争过。
七年前写过这片的新闻，索金从08年就开始写这个剧本，最早是准备给斯皮尔伯格拍，连着换了三个大导演都没成，最后索金才决定亲自上阵。一直拖延到今年大选前夕，刚好也有了新的时代意义。影片没太展现异皮士的疯狂行为艺术，几乎把全部篇幅都放在他最擅长的文戏台词上，机关枪般密集扫射。“道不同但方向相同”，"If our blood is gonna flow, let it flow all over the city“，“你是否想和平推翻政府？我们每四年都在这么做”，“比起政府对我的蔑视，我对它的蔑视不值得一提”，"All world is watching!" 结案陈词读4752个名字好燃
一个感想：在这个年代，煽动情绪远比启发思考要重要得多。哪怕你拍的是法庭戏。
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