Review of Reds (1981) by Stephen E — 25 Sep 2012

Reds plays in a time when the political landscape of the US actually wasn't flat as the Mid-West. For modern day viewers it's almost impossible to imagine that something like a US Communist party ever existed. It did.

And one of the great personalities of the movement was Jack Reed. This is the guy Warren Beatty decided to make a film about - actually a pretty good idea, because he lived fast and died young and was in Russia at the time of the Bolshevik revolution.

He also made some pretty bad decisions, because he not only produced and directed this little 3-hour flick but also decided to star in it as the one and only Jack Reed. The problem is, Warren Beatty is not the best actor imho and I have no idea how he could ever got nominated for serious acting awards. I saw him in Bugsy where he was only mediocre, in Dick Tracy where his usual cheesiness came to benefit because of the nature of the film and now in Reds where he, again, sucks a little bit.

Moreover, he gave his spouse Diane Keaton the female lead role which was an even more terrible casting choice than using himself as the male lead. Keaton has not the weary looks of a strong woman that could actually do all that what Louise Bryant did. During the first ninety minutes, when the film plays out more like a left-wing Great Gatsby than a film about the Russian revolution she was quite ok but at the point when they come to Russia for the first time she seems horribly out of place.

Pity, that these scenes (which take about thirty minutes of the whole runtime) are the best in the whole movie, when the main focus turns from Bryant's and Reed's relationship to the bigger picture I waited for. This sequence is too short though and afterwards it gets tiring again - back in the US Reed concerns himself with inner-party quarrels and his return to Russia left quite a disjoint in the structure of the film (despite the epic runtime).

Not everything is as negative as I described it though. The cinematography is great and the settings and costumes look awesome as well. The time period is something we don't see that often, and that adds to the visuals. I think the story would have been worth telling but Beatty's way just didn't work for me. He made an epic without merely any epic ingredients. The way this film was made would have suited a 90 minute film better - we get no big battles or meltdowns or deprivations. There aren't too many extraordinary occurences to keep me interested in the film during its three hours.