TRUMBO

4 stars (out of 5)

Director Jay Roach has handled an awful lot of comedies (three Austin Powers pics, two Meet The Parents pics and more), and this study of the great Dalton Trumbo (1905 – 1976) needed someone like him to play up the fact that Trumbo was a very funny guy – and that the Hollywood blacklist was so absurd there was nothing to do but laugh at it.

Bryan Cranston is fabulous as the titular screenwriter, and when we first meet him and his family in 1947 he’s flying high professionally and about to become the highest paid writer in Hollywood and therefore the world, as several rather envious sorts note. The brilliant Dalton’s a family man, a war hero, a patriot and a communist, and this combination is a dangerous one as the Cold War hots up and he finds it hard to shut up around such notable ‘pinko’-haters as John Wayne (David James Elliott, convincing without looking like ‘The Duke’) and cruelly powerful gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren, of course).

Fighting for the rights of underpaid Hollywood workers (never a good idea) and pamphleteering at Wayne’s speeches land Trumbo in further hot water, and soon he and his colleagues (not all of them necessarily communists) are trying to take on the government and the House Un-American Activities. And this leads to prison, health problems for fellow troublemaker Arlen Hird (Louis CK), Trumbo’s pseudonymous work on Roman Holiday that won Ian McLellan Hunter (Alan Tudyk) an Oscar (and left Hunter deeply guilty) and our hero’s name being mud in Tinseltown as former friends like Edward G Robinson (Michael Stuhlbarg) are forced to turn their backs.

Some have quibbled over the fact that Elliott and Stuhlbarg don’t look much like Wayne and Robinson here but it hardly matters as their performances are so strong, and they’re matched by a large and luminous cast that includes: Diane Lane (as Cleo Trumbo); Elle Fanning (as older daughter Niki); John Goodman (in a very John Goodman-ish role as Poverty Row producer Frank King); Christian Berkel (as Otto Preminger); Kiwi actor Dean O’Gorman (as Kirk Douglas); a wonderfully poisonous Mirren; and Cranston, everyone’s favourite after Breaking Bad and playing a character you’ll love rather than loathe.

And while Dalton Trumbo’s inspiring life was always going to be made into a movie by someone at some point, there’s obviously more at play here between the lines, as this isn’t just a movie about the blacklist and the ‘Hollywood 10’ but a sneaky study of our freedom of speech and civil liberties, and how they’re being undermined right bloody NOW!!!