Review – Trumbo

Famous blacklist victim Dalton Trumbo gets the sentimental celebrity treatment. Aside from an unseemly digression about masturbation, the documentary focuses almost exclusively on the writer’s role in the Hollywood Ten and associated HUAC witch-hunting. Several movie stars – some of whom worked on Trumbo pictures and some of whom didn’t – read passages from the writer’s personal correspondence, which of course gave the whole thing a sense of currency and importance it might otherwise have lacked. Normally I tend to regard that as a cheap tactic, but here I’m willing to overlook it. Considering the current political climate, 21st century audiences could stand to be reminded about the risks of letting intolerant idiots run the government. Mildly amusing