Cranston was great but overall the movie was middling.

Basado en la obra de teatro del mismo nombre, "Trumbo" es un documental dirigido por Peter Askin acerca de Douglas Trumbo, uno de los mejores guionistas en la historia de Hollywood, quien vió opacada su carrera cuando termina siendo víctima de la cacería de brujas liderada por el Senador Joseph McCarthy en los años 50 por su vinculación al partido comunista. La vida y obra de Trumbo se intercala aquí con la lectura de varias de sus cartas, a cargo de actores como Michael Douglas, Liam Neeson, Karen Allen y Paul Giamatti, entre otros.

Basado en la obra de teatro del mismo nombre, "Trumbo" es un documental dirigido por Peter Askin acerca de Douglas Trumbo, uno de los mejores guionistas en la historia de Hollywood, quien vió opacada su carrera cuando termina siendo víctima de la cacería de brujas liderada por el Senador Joseph McCarthy en los años 50 por su vinculación al partido comunista. La vida y obra de Trumbo se intercala aquí con la lectura de varias de sus cartas, a cargo de actores como Michael Douglas, Liam Neeson, Karen Allen y Paul Giamatti, entre otros.

"Trumbo" is suffering from an ill conceived distribution plan. Allowing the energy and buzz of the strong initial reaction to wither away in five theaters while fifty other features are playing in hundreds. I believe in getting their furstest with the mostest.

Review: I actually enjoyed this documentary which showed how hard it was for screenwriters during the hunt for communists in America. I liked Dalton Trumbo's clever way of writing, which was truly wasted during this period. He wrote movies like Spartacus and in some of his films he had to go under a different name, even though he did win a couple of Oscars, which one of them he couldn't collect. The director of this documentary cleverly used great actors to narrate some of Trumbo's story through his own writings, which shows how Trumbo used words in a extraordinary way. The only problem that I found with the film was that it doesn't really show what movies Trumbo made or his actually contribution to Hollywood, which is a shame because he was a highly talented individual. The movie concentrates on the negative side of his life more than the whole writing process which would have made a better documentary but it's definitely worth a watch just to see how far we have come in the movie world. Watchable! Round-Up: I must admit, it was the list of actors that drew me to this documentary and not the subject matter, but after watching it the thing that I enjoyed the most was the way that Trumbo wrote and his life story. The actors do portray his story well and because of the fact that they are all A-Listers, it shows how much Trumbo was highly respected. It's was good to see Kirk Douglas and Donald Sutherland, who have actually worked with Trumbo, so they were talking about there experiences with this great screen writer. We could do with a person like Trumbo in this day and age because there is a lack of scripts in Hollywood which are original and classed as classics. I recommend this documentary to people who are interested in the writing process of making a film during the blacklist period. 5/10

Screenwriter Dalton Trumbo was arguably the most famous of the "Unfriendly Ten" who were blacklisted in 1947 in the first flash of America's Communist witch-hunts. Seems today somewhat outrageous and comical. But sadly History still continues its search for creative thinkers who go against the grain and think for themselves. The Documentary cherishes Trumbo's memories through letters, pictures, and interviews by beloved family and friends including some of Hollywood's biggest names. The real shame is preventing talent from shining!

A fascinating and undoubtedly talented writer, if you love film there is no way you could watch this and not gain something. A nice mixture of archive footage, film footage and celebrity/actor presence. The only criticism I could muster is that some of the actor monologues felt a bit too 'drama school' for my liking.

This movie should be required viewing for everyone who is truly worried about the state of free speech in America. A truly radical film in that it gets to the root of the problem.

Sounds like a badass.

Fairly engrossing documentary of Dalton Trumbo, told mostly through his own words.

seems we're about to face another McCarthy era. this movie should be required viewing for all those who face scrutiny for their belief in freedom, by those who have been indoctrinated with lies.

Surprising account of the blacklisted screenwriter and some incredible examples of his great writing performed exquisitely by hollywood's best .

This is one of the most honest and revealing biographical documentaries to date. Plus it does such a great job to show how the best masters worked in a subversive way.

Trumbo is a fantastic documentary feature that perfectly mixes tragedy and comedy and introduces audience to the world and work of this wonderful writer, artist and person. I would really like to have a tribute like this on my 100th birthday.

Yuh gotta watch this stuff. It's important nobody forgets.

Bravo. I had previously never heard of this guy though now his body of work is ringing some bells. But this is a phenomenal documentary that puts on record as well as anything on the subject the embarassment that was the McCarthy Era. Dalton Trumbo was a successful screen writer but evidently due to the nature of dialogue/content in some of his films, was accused of being a communist. An aside: I'm not sure I've come across better writing. The guy wrote tons of letters and, though wordy, they are simply brilliant. Regardless, Trumbo was one of several who pleaded the first amendment. The fifth amendment, which protects one against self-incrimination, did not apply to having or not having a political view. So they pleaded the first. Fantastic. There are some great ideas in the movie, many of which I have had, none of which I could ever put into words so well. He writes about watching friends betray themselves and how easily he lets them go from his life. He talks about necessities versus free speech: when it comes to feeding and clothing your children, do you favor those needs over the need of free speech? Inevitably, the free speech is sacrificed first. Somehow, Trumbo made it work, often through using non-blacklisted friends to get his works out there. Maybe the most notorious was for The Brave One, which one an Oscar, and is probably the only Oscar trophy never claimed. When asked if he wrote it (he did), he neither claims or denies, but does say his young daughter knows the title of every movie he has written and has kept it secret and that she would be deserving of the Oscar. Again, fantastic. A few people I've encountered seem to model my belief system. Trumbo is right there with the best of them. His beliefs are so principled and so defined, and they happen to be in tune with mine, which I think is logically and morally consistent or I wouldnt have them. Many claim to have similar principles but watch them go with the first sign of trouble. Trumbo gave a lot for his, and made his family suffer as well (though they did not seem to mind). It just sickens me that this fight took place then, before then, and still takes place now. Always an idea like freedom preached but very rarely practiced. It is always refreshing when someone understands that even the United States government, mostly a bunch of lackeys in suits, is not the ultimate authority. They are merely men voted into power. Sometimes, probably often even, they are wrong. And they cannot be called right merely because of who and where they are. All that aside, a final note on the cast: awesome. Mostly they read Trumbo's letters and were highly effective. Straithairn, Neeson, Lucas, Michael Douglas, Lane, Giamatti, Allen, and Dennehy exceeded most of their acting work by merely reading this guy's letters. Kirk Douglas speaks as an actor who worked with Trumbo, and he is just as effective. On the topic, I gave Jim Carrey in The Majestic high marks, and Straithairn won acclaim playing Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck on the same subject. This documentary is a nice supplement to both.

In the beginning, there was the word and in the end, there was only the word, which in the case of the documentary "Trumbo" are the letters and screenplays penned by famed writer Dalton Trumbo, one of the Hollywood 10, held in contempt of Congress(Not to be confused with contempt for Congress) for refusing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee(HUAC) and jailed for a year.(Ring Lardner Jr. said he would have hated himself in the morning if he had.) After being blacklisted for ten years as a result and struggling to find any work, Trumbo's first onscreen credit was for "Exodus," due to Otto Preminger and his enormous brass balls.(Even with his liberal credentials, Preminger was never called before HUAC because as bullies, they were deathly afraid of him. It would have been funny if he had been, though.) Unlike I had originally presumed, this was only the first of many bricks in the blacklist to be taken down. That's not the only misconception that "Trumbo" seeks to correct, although it confuses HUAC with Senator Joe McCarthy. They were two separate entities, amongst the many red baiters out to ruin people in the 1950's. In front of the committee, the writers pled the first, not the fifth amendment, because they felt had done nothing wrong by freely associating with the Communist Party which was the only political organization active in political change at the time. The documentary seeks to illustrate Trumbo's role in these events by interviews(some with him before he died in 1976), archival footage, film clips and actors reading Trumbo's letters which is a mixed success at best. This takes the movie out of the realm of being a documentary and into a performance piece(Actually, this was adapted from a play). The best are Nathan Lane reading the only positive letter ever written from father to son on the subject of masturbation and Paul Giamatti reading a letter to the phone company. All of which provides a complete portrait of the writer as a cantankerous soul(nice people generally do not usually make good fighters). But for the best insight on the blacklist, check out "The Front."

The readings of Trumbo's letters by Douglas, Neesom and others were the making of this documentary for me. Not to say that his black listing and life story, against the backdrop of Americas paranoia after the second world war is not engaging or interesting, it is, but his writing is brilliant and when read by someone like Donald Sutherland it becomes astounding.

If one ever wanted to make a case against the inherent banality of assigning "5 stars" or "10 tomatoes" in the business of film review, then a film such as Trumbo would give one fodder for argument. Despite enlisting several Hollywood stars to read the letters of the man in a compelling way, this cannot be said to offer entertainment. To be taken as a documentary, one must criticize a lack of background depth to the climate that created a politicized blacklist and an almost complete occlusion of the political philosophy expressed by those blacklisted that caused them to be vilified in the first place. "McCarthyism" is properly used as a pejorative term to refer to the era when a Senator and his cronies sacrificed people's lives in order to aggrandize themselves optically before the public and provides a dire warning of the misuse of power in a democratic capitalist system. I think it is important for people today to pay heed to these past days and be very watchful of their "leaders" at all times, because we have seen countless examples in history of the notion that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". As an individual your entire life can be ruined by government out to scare the public into rallying to their cause, accepting the erosion of rights in the name of "safety", and pointing one out as an example to be ostracized by the community at large. In days of Patriot Acts and other attacks on civil freedoms to stop "the terrorists", the parallels can be easily drawn. Having said all that, it comes down to the scoring system as always, and this gets my "watch once and enjoy" 6er because of the lacks as a documentary piece, despite the vital importance of the material in general.

As far as documentaries go this one was pretty good. Director Dalton Trumbo, as it turns out, was a really cool guy. He was blacklisted for who knows what when everyone was naming names for being communist. He was in jail for a while and then moved to Mexico with his family and published scripts under a whole bunch of different alternate names. If you don't know anything about this time period and its affect on the film industry, you'll definitely get a history lesson here! The way director Peter Askin presents the information is pretty cool as well. He uses Trumbo's family members for interviews and actors who had some relation to him for readings of letters he wrote. You get an interesting sense of who and how he was when things that he wrote are read by someone who 1. knew him well enough to know how it should sound and 2. can actually act! I don't know that it was interesting enough to watch again, but definitely worth seeing once.