I am extremely engrossed my Hollywood 10 movies since especially considering the current political situation . Started watching this and became entranced by the story but at 1 hour i just could not take the unlikable actor playing Trumbo. They should redo it with a real human being.

Cranston is a magnetic on screen presence and Mirren is surprisingly vile, great of course, but truly vile. I'd wondered why I'd not heard of this fellow. That he wrote most of his best stuff (including Spartacus) under pseudonyms having being pushed out of Hollywood due to his politics explains a lot. It's not all dark though, in fact it's all delivered quite pleasantly, with plenty of humour. Not least with Trumbo squaring up defiantly against the John Wayne character in a particularly amusing scene. I've no idea what The Duke was like in real life, but here he's painted a little bit like Charlton Heston, a gun toting good ol boy. It's a scene of brain against brawn, intelligence verses paranoia. It may be a slightly bleak story, but blimey if it's not great!

Towards the end of the film, Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston in an Academy Award-nominated performance) makes a profound statement during his acceptance speech for the Laurel Award for Screen Writing Achievement during a Writer's Guild of America ceremony (1970). He says (paraphrase) "It will do no good to search for villains or heroes or saints or devils because there were none; there were only victims (during the communist blacklist years of the 1940's and 1950's)." This part of his speech sums up well the point of this film which chronicles one of the few survivors of the communist blacklist scare during the two decades after the Second World War. Not only teachers, doctors, academics, factory workers, social workers and many others were targeted resulting in the devastation of careers and lives, but also people working in the entertainment industry in Hollywood, CA. Few congressional committees in Post-World War Two United States were more un-American than the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security. The latter saw the rise of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's witch-hunts in which he accused people both within the US government and without but among the US citizenry as being communists in collusion with the then Soviet Union (USSR). As a result of these witch-hunts, friends turned on friends, usually fearing the wrath of the committee. If you didn't cooperate, the "scarlet letter" of communist or communist sympathizer was forever plastered onto you like a badge of shame. In addition, you might spend time in prison for being in contempt of congress. In the case of Dalton Trumbo, he experienced both indignities. Dalton Trumbo was one of the most brilliant screenwriters of his era. He wrote such classics as "A Guy Name Joe", "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo", "Roman Holiday", and even the b-film noire "Gun Crazy". He also wrote the screenplays to two great Hollywood epics: "Spartacus" and "Exodus". Despite his credentials, he was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee to testify about whether he was or had been a member of the Communist Party. Many of his Hollywood friends were also subpoenaed, some were sympathetic to the cause of rooting out "communists" while others who were appalled at the committees' actions but terrified of being blacklisted reluctantly cooperated. Prominent members of the entertainment community including Edward G. Robinson, John Wayne, and Ronald Reagan were brought before the committee. Trumbo was no exception. Will he cooperate or risk losing his career?A brilliant film with a tour-de-force performance by Cranston as Trumbo. Trumbo is not always the easiest of characters to like. He sometimes sacrifices the needs of his family to maintain his career. Cranston finds the difficult balance of finding the humanity of Trumbo while also exposing his many shortcomings, including writing in the bathtub! Trumbo was a brilliant writer who didn't deserve his treatment at the hands of the US government. At the same time, his family didn't deserve what they suffered either. As stated earlier, there were no victors but only victims.

This film has triggered my need to locate and borrow a book or two about the Hollywood blacklist so that I can learn more about it and possibly gain an alternate view of the events of the film. I had some knowledge of the blacklist prior to seeing Trumbo, mostly because of all my reading of various Lucille Ball-oriented books and just seeing little blurbs here and there this horrible period in Hollywood history. This film told the story of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo. Trumbo was one of the infamous "Hollywood Ten," the group of men who refused to answer questions to the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) about their alleged involvement in the Communist Party. These men were all jailed for contempt of congress. They were also blacklisted by Hollywood studios. The only way for Trumbo to work was to write screenplays and get non-blacklisted friends to put their names on Trumbo's work and submit the screenplays to the studios. Trumbo and his friend would split the proceeds under the table. Later, Trumbo would use pseudonyms for his work. Later, he and his other blacklisted screenwriter friends found work writing bad B movies and submitting the screenplays under a wide array of pseudonyms. Trumbo's blacklist ended when Kirk Douglas and Otto Preminger approached him with their respective films (Spartacus and Exodus) and stated that they would put Trumbo's real name on their film.I hadn't realized that John Wayne and Hedda Hopper were such prominent figures in the Hollywood division of the HUAC's witch hunt. I also didn't know that Edward G. Robinson's career was affected by his affiliation with Trumbo and the other Hollywood Ten. I also found it disappointing that Robinson snitched on the Hollywood Ten by naming names, but then I imagine that the pressure not to become an "unperson" via blacklist was overwhelming.Bryan Cranston's portrayal of Trumbo was excellent. Were it not Leonardo DiCaprio's year to win the Oscar, Cranston's performance was worthy of an Oscar. While I'm not too knowledgeable on the real Dalton Trumbo, I would fully believe he was like Cranston's portrayal. It seemed very realistic. Cranston really went the full nine yards in capturing Trumbo's true persona. Helen Mirren made a perfect ruthless Hedda Hopper. Diane Lane was also effective as Trumbo's wife Cleo. Finally, John Goodman was hilarious as the studio boss who ran the bad B movie studio. Goodman's character didn't care what the film was, he just wanted some lightweight, ridiculous fluff that he thought he could exploit and make a quick buck off of it.My only complaint about this film is the casting of the actors who portrayed John Wayne and Edward G. Robinson. They didn't look or sound anything like the original actors. They didn't even try to do impressions of those performers. I thought the actor playing Kirk Douglas wasn't too bad. At least he somewhat looked like Douglas.I'd highly recommend this one.