Trumbo (2015)

TRUMBO  (2015)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Jay Roach
    Bryan Cranston, Diane Lane, Michael Stuhlbarg,
    Helen Mirren, David James Elliott, Alan Tudyk,
    Dean O'Gorman, Christian Berkel, Louis C.K.
As this movie opens, it's 1947 and Dalton Trumbo's in Louis B. Mayer's office signing a contract making him the highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood. Trumbo's left-wing politics are no secret, but this is America, and he's living the good life in sunny California with a house on a lake, three nice kids, a wife played by Diane Lane and an infinite supply of booze and cigarettes. What could go wrong? A lot, of course. The Red Scare is getting into gear, and it's not long before Trumbo's being trashed in the press, called before Congress, and hauled off to prison for holding and expressing unpopular views. That's America, too, sometimes. The rest of the movie is Trumbo against the blacklist, but there are other players involved, actors, directors and fellow writers, all doing whatever they can to get through a terrible time, if not with honor, then at least with their families, lives and careers intact. Bryan Cranston plays Trumbo, blunt, caustic, literate and self-righteous, a pain in the neck to live with and an annoyance even to those who support his cause. Helen Mirren does a venomous bit as gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, and John Goodman steals a scene or two as a poverty-row producer who hires Trumbo to write shit screenplays under numerous fake names. How Cranston managed to dodge cancer and emphysema while smoking his way through this is anybody's guess.