Trumbo is a solid (and fairly formulaic) Hollywood biopic elevated by a powerful central performance from Bryan Cranston.
In many respects, Trumbo is a very familiar story. It is a film produced by Hollywood about Hollywood, which offers a broadly positive portrayal of the industry and a vital chapter of its social history. As the title implies, Trumbo focuses upon the life and times of Dalton Trumbo; Trumbo was a famous writer branded a communist as part of the “Hollywood Ten”, sent to prison and excommunicated from the industry. It is a tragic and shameful chapter in the history of Hollywood, one that leaves scars still felt today.
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The plot beats of Trumbo are familiar enough to anybody with an appreciation of the biopic formula. Trumbo is an eccentric idealist who endures terrible hardships (and yet imposes them upon his family) in pursuit of a laudable goal. There are a few nods to the idea that Dalton Trumbo is manipulative and self-serving, but the film never makes a particularly compelling case for its central character as anything more than careless. Trumbo runs through all the scenes and elements one expects from a story like this; from the quirky details to the domestic drama.
There is something very rote and familiar about all this; a movie about a screenwriting genius that lacks any of the energy or verve that its central character brought to his own work. However, while the film doesn’t necessarily work in a “big picture” sense, it is held together by the finer details. Cranston offers a wonderful central performance that towers over the rest of the film, and the movie offsets some of its more formulaic plotting with a tendency towards witty banter and wry one-liners. Trumbo doesn’t have the right stuff, but it has almost enough of the write stuff.
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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Bryan Cranston, film, Jay Roach, non-review review, review, trumbo | 4 Comments »
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