Review of RKO 281 (1999) by Mariana H — 15 Jan 2008
A movie about the making of the greatest movie ever made. You can't expect too much from a made-for-cable movie, but the subject matter alone was enough to keep me interested. I was a little worried prior to seeing this as to how anyone could hope to portray the larger than life persona of Orson Welles but I was thoroughly satisfied with Live Schreiber's performance, he did a really good job with the voice and you can tell they put a lot of work into recreating some famous pictures of Welles at the beginning.
If you've seen 'the Battle Over Citizen Kane' documentary you'll recognize most of the shots. The best performance in the movie would have to go to James Cromwell in his portrayal of William Randolph Hearst, he was awesome and he looked just like Hearst, I was very impressed.
The one thing that bothered me about this movie was how often this film about Citizen Kane tried to mirror scenes from Citizen Kane. Not the parts where they were filming the movie but like the first five minutes of RKO is shot exactly like the beginning of Kane.
Obviously meant to be a nod to the original, but it comes off as being a comparison, which seems a little pretentious even though I understand what they're going for.
This review of RKO 281 (1999) was written by Mariana H on 15 Jan 2008.
RKO 281 has generally received positive reviews.
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