Four stars
Have you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party? With these words the House Un-American Activities Committee put the whole of Hollywood into a red, white and blue funk. Who would dare to stand up to Senator McCarthy, gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, John Wayne, Ronald Reagan and the other assembled forces on the right? Step forward Dalton Trumbo, a Hollywood hero who now has a biopic worthy of his deeds.
Trumbo, played here by Bryan Cranston - and if he doesn’t get an Oscar nomination for this, I’ll eat one of Hopper’s batty old hats - did not do any of the running, jumping, fighting, or saving the world stuff. He was a screenwriter, and as Jay Roach’s indulgent but wildly enjoyable comedy drama makes clear, he was something of a flawed character himself - egotistical, selfish, occasionally hectoring, interested in dollars and critical acclaim. But he, along with the rest of the Hollywood 10, and many more ordinary mortals across America, from teachers to truckers, also stood up for freedom of speech at a time in America when the “red menace” was thought to be under every bed.
Hollywood owed Trumbo and the rest of them a love letter, and this is it. With a funny and insightful script by John McNamara, and also starring Helen Mirren (as Hopper), John Goodman as a studio boss, and Louis CK as a fellow scribbler, Trumbo will be catnip to anyone enamoured of Hollywood in its golden era. It’s all here, the gossip, the bitching, the backstabbing, and all shot in beautiful LA sunshine. Roach (Meet the Parents) captures the mood and paranoia of the times perfectly, and if his strokes are sometimes too broad, and his swipes at the right too sweeping, you’ll likely be too engrossed to care too much.
On UK release 5 February, 2016
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