Stream It Or Skip It: ‘No Accident’ on Max, A Trial to Hold Charlottesville Rally Participants Accountable

“This is the trial that will set the narrative about what happened in Charlottesville,” bellows a disembodied voice over the credits of No Accident (now streaming on Max). It’s not an exaggeration to say this is a trial about much more given that the Unite the Right rally was the tip of the spear in an uptick of racially-motivated violence. The stakes extend far beyond any courtroom.

NO ACCIDENT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Roberta “Robbie” Kaplan, a well-known lawyer involved in the fight for marriage equality, feels the urge to take action after watching Trump’s infamous 2017 “very fine people on both sides” press conference following the Unite the Right rally at Charlottesville. She teams up with Karen Dunn, another prominent attorney, to use the Ku Klux Klan Act to help hold the organizers of the rally accountable for organized action to commit racialized violence. The express goal is to get justice on behalf of nine plaintiffs injured that day, but the path to get there proves particularly challenging given the insouciance and nihilism of the defendants.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The documentary most directly recalls 2016’s legal thriller Denial, which shows a British lawyer (played by Rachel Weisz) squaring off against a Holocaust denier in a trial that essentially forces her to prove that the Shoah actually occurred.

Performance Worth Watching: It makes sense that Robbie Kaplan is the anchor of the documentary. She’s fluent in both the legal and emotional stakes of the trial.

Memorable Dialogue: “If you can’t describe the crux of your case in less than a minute,” quips Kaplan, “you’re either not a very good lawyer or you don’t have a very good case.”

Sex and Skin: Nothing of the sort is depicted, although the end goal of some sex — reproduction — plays a large part in the heinous White Replacement theory motivating a number of the defendants.

Our Take: This is a trial that is so much more than just a legal proceeding. No Accident documents nothing less than an early salvo in the war over information. The alt-right took advantage of innovations in communication to coordinate hateful violence, and it will take a similarly organized effort among countervailing forces to retake the narrative. Accountability takes many forms — in this case, it may mean aiming to bankrupt the defendants. But it also must be balanced against the shameless opportunism of White nationalists to use these trials as platforms to air their rhetoric to a larger audience. As a piece of non-fiction cinema, director Kristi Jacobson’s No Accident is mostly just serviceable, especially as it gets bogged down in some of the inside baseball of the legal procedural. But the doc gets a lot of mileage out of just how explosive the subject matter is.

Our Call: STREAM IT. People who stand for the forces of equality and justice should see No Accident. That’s not for the relief of the verdict, mind you. It’s an important watch for a reminder of the forces that still persist even in spite of it.

Marshall Shaffer is a New York-based freelance film journalist. In addition to Decider, his work has also appeared on Slashfilm, Slant, The Playlist and many other outlets. Some day soon, everyone will realize how right he is about Spring Breakers.

Watch No Accident on Max