Trumbo (2015)

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Excellent, a Must See

Don't listen to the negative reviews

.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

I am extremely engrossed my Hollywood 10 movies since especially considering the current political situation . Started watching this and became entranced by the story but at 1 hour i just could not take the unlikable actor playing Trumbo. They should redo it with a real human being.

The story itself isn't made apparent until around an hour in and even then there's not a clear through-line as 'Trumbo (2015)' tries to balance its bio-pic sensibilities with its apparently moralistic central ethic. The problem with this is that it's never made properly clear what the main message of the flick is - whether it be to support freedom of speech, to oppose the blacklist that plagued some screenwriters in the 40s and 50s or even to just outright condone the protagonist's communist ideologies. There's also an unbalanced and uncomfortable combination of composite and real-life characters that not only offsets the credibility of the piece but also downright calls into question its intent. The relatively unfocused feature is a little too baggy for its own good, too. The performances are all decent, if occasionally a little pantomime, though and there's some entertainment to be had throughout. It's just a tad ironic that it could've used a tighter screenplay. 6/10

Towards the end of the film, Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston in an Academy Award-nominated performance) makes a profound statement during his acceptance speech for the Laurel Award for Screen Writing Achievement during a Writer's Guild of America ceremony (1970). He says (paraphrase) "It will do no good to search for villains or heroes or saints or devils because there were none; there were only victims (during the communist blacklist years of the 1940's and 1950's)." This part of his speech sums up well the point of this film which chronicles one of the few survivors of the communist blacklist scare during the two decades after the Second World War. Not only teachers, doctors, academics, factory workers, social workers and many others were targeted resulting in the devastation of careers and lives, but also people working in the entertainment industry in Hollywood, CA. Few congressional committees in Post-World War Two United States were more un-American than the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security. The latter saw the rise of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's witch-hunts in which he accused people both within the US government and without but among the US citizenry as being communists in collusion with the then Soviet Union (USSR). As a result of these witch-hunts, friends turned on friends, usually fearing the wrath of the committee. If you didn't cooperate, the "scarlet letter" of communist or communist sympathizer was forever plastered onto you like a badge of shame. In addition, you might spend time in prison for being in contempt of congress. In the case of Dalton Trumbo, he experienced both indignities. Dalton Trumbo was one of the most brilliant screenwriters of his era. He wrote such classics as "A Guy Name Joe", "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo", "Roman Holiday", and even the b-film noire "Gun Crazy". He also wrote the screenplays to two great Hollywood epics: "Spartacus" and "Exodus". Despite his credentials, he was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee to testify about whether he was or had been a member of the Communist Party. Many of his Hollywood friends were also subpoenaed, some were sympathetic to the cause of rooting out "communists" while others who were appalled at the committees' actions but terrified of being blacklisted reluctantly cooperated. Prominent members of the entertainment community including Edward G. Robinson, John Wayne, and Ronald Reagan were brought before the committee. Trumbo was no exception. Will he cooperate or risk losing his career?A brilliant film with a tour-de-force performance by Cranston as Trumbo. Trumbo is not always the easiest of characters to like. He sometimes sacrifices the needs of his family to maintain his career. Cranston finds the difficult balance of finding the humanity of Trumbo while also exposing his many shortcomings, including writing in the bathtub! Trumbo was a brilliant writer who didn't deserve his treatment at the hands of the US government. At the same time, his family didn't deserve what they suffered either. As stated earlier, there were no victors but only victims.

What shocked me most is the mirror reflection of today's Russia (or "Russia Today":) - that's the place where I live. This whole story and characters are literally taken from the Moscow streets. Especially streets that are filled with crowds today. You can't stay quiet. You are not allowed to express yourself either. You just have to pick up which side you are on. Seriously, this Movie should be banned from modern Russia screens! Yet I've seen it there only! And that means not everything is so tragically late as it seems. Neither here nor somewhere else until characters like Hero will appear from time to time. Love this Movie! The idea behind it is just fabulous! 10 out of 10!