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Bryan Cranston's light touch portraying famed Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo neatly balances the heavy-handed approach director Jay Roach employs in the biographical drama "Trumbo."
Cranston plays Trumbo as an urbane, sometimes pompous, writer who signs a fat contract with MGM just as his past membership in the Communist Party is brought under investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Soon Trumbo finds himself blacklisted, serving a short prison stint and being vilified at every turn.
Roach ("Meet the Fockers," "Austin Powers") and screenwriter John McNamara serve up many characters as one-note stereotypes: the craven studio heads, the ineffectual liberals and particularly the flag-waving Hollywood conservatives led by star John Wayne (David James Elliott) and gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren). The movie relies heavily on impersonations of famous faces like Kirk Douglas (Dean O'Gorman) and Edward G. Robinson (Michael Stuhlbarg), but the narrative takes an interesting turn as Trumbo keeps cranking out scripts, using other writers to "front" his work or doing pseudonymous writing for a B-movie producer (John Goodman).
Cranston is clearly having a ball with Trumbo's rich verbiage, whether jousting with a fellow writer (Louis C.K.) or arguing with his nurturing wife (Diane Lane), and it's the actor's take that enlivens this straightforward look at a screenwriting legend's wilderness years.
'Trumbo'
Opens Wednesday, Nov. 25, at area theaters; rated R for language, including sexual references; 124 minutes.