Rating: 
Summary: Guilty by Fact
Review: This is just another pro-communist film that tries to re-paint the 1950's as some type of ruthless time subjected by patriots against innocent leftists. The reality is that Hollywood was full of not only leftwingers but with hardcore communists as well. These people conspired with Soviet agents to tilt the U.S. to the Left and to aid the Soviets in their global war against the U.S.This film is pure lies in the way it tries to portray these communists as innocent filmakers. The reality is that they were quite guilty and the evidence demonstrating this was without a doubt quite valid. There's nothing to see in this film that would relate to historical fact so don't waste your time.
Rating: 
Summary: Underrated
Review: This movie is a saddening look at one of America's darkest times. It has received lots of negative reviews, but don't listen to them. It is the best movie I have seen about the times and it captures the essence of Hollywood during the 1950s when McCarthy and the House Un-American Committee were at the peak of power. Robert De Niro is excellent, as always, as David Merrill, a director with success, fans, and he is living his dream. Then he goes on a vacation, and when he returns, the town is different. The movie opens up with a typical Committee meeting in which David's friend Larry is spooked by the committee. Before long he is burning his books and disowning his wife as a communist. Red Fever has hit town, and David is next in line. Somebody has named him as a Communist sympathyzer, and he refuses to testify to the Committee because he is angry and doesn't want to hurt his friends. Before long he finds he cannot get a job, not directing, producing, or even working in a film repair shop. His life is turned upside down, and he decides finally to testify to the Committee. The acting is what makes this movie, De Niro, but also Annette Bening, George Wendt, Martin Scorsese is great in a cameo. My favorite part is when one cast member is called a commie by the producer for siding with David. "I turned in commies without the government even asking. If you want to call me a commie, you got to back it up." David replies, "If he wants to call you a commie, he doesn't need to back it up." Some people say it is contrived or unbelievable, but the transformation in David, from materialistic director to a man seeing the need to defy the McCarthyists is done well. If you like history, or if you like De Niro, you will enjoy this film.
Rating:
Summary: St Thomas More Step Aside Here Comes Robert Merrill
Review: This movie replaces character development and plot with an earnestly earnest exposition on well-known historical facts. It is about the victimization of people by the House Committee on Unamerican Activities (HUAC). Robert De Niro protrays a movie director (Robert Merrill) who with unflinching courage defends himself from false accusations, protects his friends' reputations and exposes the committee for the know-nothing jingoists that they are. It would have been a much better movie if De Niro's character was a human being and not a preternatural being of infinite virtue and courage. He, with a steely gaze, destroys his own and his estranged wife's lives with his unyielding principles. St Thomas More would have to acknowedge that compared to the Robert Merrill character, he was a moral coward. HUAC is now an historical fact with the judgement of history revealing it as an hysterical reaction to a mythical threat. The real question about this movie is why its creators thought that they had to reveal the same historical facts to their audience with paste board characters in a stilted plot. If they had used the HUAC hearings as a backdrop to examine someone whose world had been talken from him unjustly, this could have been a fascinating movie. However that would be a different movie in which the personalities of the characters would have been more than stock political cliches.
Rating:
Summary: St Thomas More Step Aside Here Comes Robert Merrill
Review: This movie replaces character development and plot with an earnestly earnest exposition on well-known historical facts. It is about the victimization of people by the House Committee on Unamerican Activities (HUAC). Robert De Niro protrays a movie director (Robert Merrill) who with unflinching courage defends himself from false accusations, protects his friends' reputations and exposes the committee for the know-nothing jingoists that they are. It would have been a much better movie if De Niro's character was a human being and not a preternatural being of infinite virtue and courage. He, with a steely gaze, destroys his own and his estranged wife's lives with his unyielding principles. St Thomas More would have to acknowedge that compared to the Robert Merrill character, he was a moral coward. HUAC is now an historical fact with the judgement of history revealing it as an hysterical reaction to a mythical threat. The real question about this movie is why its creators thought that they had to reveal the same historical facts to their audience with paste board characters in a stilted plot. If they had used the HUAC hearings as a backdrop to examine someone whose world had been talken from him unjustly, this could have been a fascinating movie. However that would be a different movie in which the personalities of the characters would have been more than stock political cliches.
Rating:
Summary: A Bore, And A Suddenly Ironic Bore, At That
Review: Watch this well-intentioned but dull film starring Robert De Niro and featuring Martin Scorsese. Pity the destroyed lives of those who were blacklisted during the Hollywood Witchhunt. See Scorsese portray a director who is forced to flee the United States to avoid the blacklist. See De Niro's noble and fictional character stand up to the Evil Senators. Then wonder how De Niro and Scorsese could have stood with Elia Kazan at the Academy Awards, the same Elia Kazan who named names to those same Evil Senators this film condemns so thoroughly.
| 
