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75Trumbo is welcome just to bear witness to the severe consequences meted out to one man who dared to do the right thing.
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75Trumbo never wavered in his belief that his persecution was only a horrible symptom. He understood the real victim of blacklist America was America itself.
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25The misleading documentary Trumbo paints a golden nimbus of holiness around the onetime highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood, Dalton Trumbo, an on-the-record hater of democracy, defender of authoritarian rule and avowed Communist.
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80Trumbo is a terrific picture, a blend of interviews and archival footage and readings of Trumbo's letters and speeches.
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80Today few would dispute Trumbo's assessment of that very dark period: "The blacklist was a time of evil, and no one who survived it on either side came through untouched by evil."
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70An unconventional film about an unconventional man. Part documentary, part expertly staged readings, it focuses on the unquiet life and unforgettable words of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, someone who, as his son puts it, never had to go looking for trouble because it always came to him.
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60Trumbo doesn't pretend to be tough-minded about its subject, and its failure to date the letters is an annoyance. But the substance of those letters, along with documentary footage and a touching appearance by Kirk Douglas, throws a baleful light on a bleak chapter of American history.
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91Trumbo sexes up Trumbo's already dramatic story with a massive infusion of star power.
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An invigorating, funny, and moving portrait of a Hollywood hero.
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88Peter Askin's powerful documentary serves as an important reminder of our First Amendment rights, and a tribute to one man who fought to preserve them in the face of Congressional intimidation.
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75Trumbo, a rousing documentary as ornery, orotund and captivating as its subject (1905-1976), is an anatomy of irony.
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70This documentary's narrative feels deliberately chronological, as the storyline adheres to the major steps of Trumbo's career. Nonetheless, the film realizes many great moments to make the writer's story – often reduced to a footnote – into an intriguing one.
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60Donald Sutherland's passionate rendition of a speech from Trumbo's 1971 film "Johnny Got His Gun" (based on his novel) is worth the price of admission.
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83That's Trumbo's message -- that the true victim was America.
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The actors--most unshaven, wrinkled, so goddamned serious--steal the writer's movie, as they wring from his epistles every last drop of blood and sweat spilled by a man punished for believing his country was better than its behavior.
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70It will serve as a fine entry point for younger auds interested in learning about the price paid by moviemakers and their families swept up in the 1950s anti-Communist net.
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70What becomes clear is that Trumbo's humor is only one thing that helped him survive the professional and personal hardships of the blacklist, which drove more than one of his Hollywood friends to kill themselves and took a toll on Trumbo's children.
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83Family home movies and photos and archival clips round out the film, which holds its hero-worshiping to fairly tolerable levels.