Trumbo (2015)

☆ ☆ ☆

Trumbo (2015) –J. Roach

A distressing time in American history as seen through the frame of a bio-pic.  Dalton Trumbo was a member of the Hollywood 10, black-listed and unable to work as a screenwriter due to his involvement with the Communist Party USA.  So, yes, this is another look at the House Un-American Activities Committee and its targeting of the film industry.  Wrong-headed Senator Joe McCarthy does not make an appearance in the film but instead columnist Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren) and star John Wayne are the leading instigators of animosity from within.  Bryan Cranston takes a star turn as Trumbo who received Oscars for Roman Holiday and The Brave One using a “front” or a false name.  We see his experience in prison after his contempt of Congress conviction and also his attempt to resuscitate his career by working anonymously for a small poverty row studio (run by crass John Goodman) before Otto Preminger and Kirk Douglas help to break the blacklist by openly employing him (on Exodus and Spartacus, respectively).  But I’m probably making the film sound better than it is.  The content is inherently enthralling but the acting is uneven (fellow traveller Louis C. K.’s deadpan style jars with the more actorly techniques around him and there is the usual problem of people playing well-known historical characters and looking nothing like them) and the script drags at times.  Some of the better known actors seem to be trapped in parts that do not let them shine.  So, on balance, Trumbo is worth a look but hardly counts as an in-depth or seriously considered treatment of the person or the times.