MOVIE REVIEW - TRUMBO | The Movie Guys

IF WE DON’T LEARN FROM HISTORY, WE’RE DOOMED TO REPEAT IT LAST MONTH AT THE BENGHAZI HEARING

Trumbo

Review by Paul Preston

I often wonder if the United States is a great country that steers off the rails every now and then to or if it’s dying to be chaos and we distract it from being that as often as we can. “Trumbo”, the new film from Jay Roach about the Blacklist and McCarthy hearings of the ‘40s and ‘50s explores a time in America’s history where it seemed everyone was dying to be chaotic.

If you don’t know the title character of Dalton Trumbo, he was a successful Hollywood screenwriter who joined the American Communist Party, along with several other industry-types including Edward G. Robinson, and later felt an extraordinary pushback from the government for doing so. After World War II, The Communist Party seemed like a healthy political party to belong to as it promoted work for everyone, fairness and equality. But as soon as Communist Russia became and enemy of the state, members of the party became enemies as well.

Congress was itching to find ways that the Communist agenda would leak through the media to the U.S. citizens and focused their gaze on Hollywood, although few to no motion pictures supported their claims. Trumbo and his fellow party members (knowns as The Hollywood Ten) were brought before a Congressional investigation committee and grilled on their actions and forced to name the names of other Hollywood players who might be Communist.

This, of course, is a blatant disregard for civil rights as Americans may belong to whatever political affiliation they choose, as protected by the Constitution. In saying as much at their hearings, members of The Hollywood Ten were held in contempt of court and many went to jail…for committing no crime.

There are other moments of Trumbo’s life that are fascinating as he continued to try and work in an industry scared to align with him (including be nominated for Academy Awards he couldn’t accept) that makes for a solid, two-hour drama that never lags. This is all helped by casting the formidable Bryan Cranston as Trumbo, sporting a period mustache that’s almost another character.

Screenwriter John McNamara populates the script with equal parts bold statements about this shameful part of America’s past with pithy, character-based dialogue that finds the humor where it can without slipping into anything too corny or flippant. Leading the way in that charge are John Goodman and Stephen Root as the King Brothers, who ran a studio that gave Blacklisted Trumbo jobs punching up lackluster scripts. The King Brothers gleefully made horrible movie after horrible movie and they’re really fun to watch.

The other supporting cast members are a wish-list for this type of movie – Helen Mirren (Who knew Hedda Hopper was such a horrible person? You can see the birth of TMZ-esque character assassination in her), Michael Stuhlbarg, Roger Bart and Elle Fanning. Jay Roach, director of “Austin Powers in Goldmember” and “Meet the Fockers” reminds us that he also directed “Recount” and “Game Change”.

What Roach does best is take a film that should no doubt feel “important” and make it feel entertaining. The message gets through, but not at the expense of making something watchable, and in the shadow of the Benghazi hearings and the round-up-the-undesirables chatter of some of our current political candidates, the timing’s right.