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".
雀斑已经演了十几年男学生了！这样言之有物的台词轰炸可以多一点，没有伍迪艾伦式掉书袋引起的那种反感。听聪明人说话，起而为正义抗争，真的燃！
不知道该说是以古喻今呢，还是说历史就是个循环呢，以及只要法院还能质疑政府，这种制度就还是相对先进的。另外最后每个真实人物的结局都很符合人设，除了黑豹党的那位，我以为他会早早被刺杀，没想到居然好好的活到了现在。
本可以拍得更磅礴一点结果就很无聊，明明只有两条时间线穿插，却依然混乱不该被安插的成分被加入超量，不如做一页ppt来得清晰。我都怀疑我和热评看的不是一部电影。
历史中发生过的事件，重演过的、近些年又上演的...只是吧不同的对待方式，能让人看见其中的各不同。有的政治审判，还让人看见还有一丝光，还吐露过真相...有的连审判都没有，政治与权力就是审判...这是与我们不同的时代，不同的世界。
是否是在暗示老美民众，他们正在过着跟1968相似的时代？
过于紧绷，努力地为情绪制造出口，宣讲也可以如此不坦率。缺少合适的指挥家，所谓乐谱不过是一沓又一沓无用的纸张。
即便明知是索金毫无避讳射出的完全自我的左翼连珠炮，也愿意毫无保留地被击中；即便明知这是篇诞生于特殊时期的战斗檄文，也愿意不加抵抗地被俘获：在不公与强权下固守着理想主义最后防线的受审者，他们的呼号是横亘时代的宣言。
虽说是美国之耻，却仍是对美国制度的一次反向肯定：在如此恶劣的处境之下，你仍有借助程序绝地反击的机会。
剧本稳中带燃，演员各有亮点，借古喻今但当下民意会不会比当初更加割裂？80
我们向失去的东西致敬，我们也纪念我们发现的东西。向世界上真实存在的善意和友爱致敬。如果是你，你也会这么做。永远为人性和善良热泪盈眶。
“我从来没有想过我要为我的思想而受到审判”。要常常翻翻自己的旧帐烂账脏账，对着镜子照照自己那张碧莲（简称 以史为镜）。
把生命简化成名字，这就是战争的意义，唯有在战争期间，杀戮才被舆论认同，好莱坞依然过于鲜明的价值观输出，this is a political trial, this is a propaganda film，
奈飞在美国大选期间推出的60年代著名历史事件改编的政治法庭戏，挺有意思。人类现代社会是需要法律的，法律也是在不断地实践、反思、辩论、修正中进步。所以能拍、能看到这样题材之影片，很有意义。
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”
欧美律政剧均秉持的同一观点，即:反对政府及其政策不代表不爱国，因为政府是为国家服务的，反而，将党派、政府与爱国高度绑定，对对于前者的监督、批评与质询视为“反动”才是最大的反动。
网飞这个片子真的让人蛮失望的。
结合当下，就让国情不同来背这个锅好了。
发生在那个万恶的美国？
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
索金写本子的时候都没想到这部会有多应景吧。有几段游行者和警察对峙戏的背景音乐热血得像台湾青春电影。以及，雀斑又一次演了街垒旁的schoolboy。
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