Review of Trumbo (2015) by Aliceofx — 09 Feb 2016

At the beginning of the film Trumbo's daughter Nikola asks her father what is communism. He says what if you had a sandwich and saw a boy who was hungry? When she answers that she would share her sandwich her father says that is communism. But it's not. Real communism would be the teacher coming in, eating the sandwich so now they're both hungry. It is a monstrous ideology that made 20th the bloodiest century in history, so to turn its opponents into crazed witch hunters is repulsive to me.

But even leaving personal biases aside Trumbo is still not a good film. It's one of those Performance Films, that gets all kinds of nominations for the main actor, but the story is just meh.

For a time I had some hope for this movie. In the middle we see Trumbo becoming the family tyrant. He's demanding and bullies those who oppose him and I thought that it was very clever. Trumbo becoming just like the people who persecuted him would show just how such attitudes are born. It would be introspective. But then it just moves along and after that I lost my faith in this movie.

The movie is inconsistent and suffers for it. Plus it's just all too speechy. Pretty much every thing Trumbo says is some kind of speech and he just never talks like a human being. The film makers really wanted you to get The Message. And sure, the nominations for Bryan Cranston are well deserved, but other than that there is no point in seeing this film.