Trumbo

TRUMBO

Director : Jay Roach

Year : 2016

Genre : Biographical drama

Rating : ***1/2

Having earned an enormous number of accolades for his incredible turn as chemistry teacher turned drug kingpin Walter White in the television masterpiece 'Breaking Bad', Bryan Cranston now threatens to add an Academy Award to his already heaving awards shelf with his superbly dynamic starring performance in 'Trumbo', director Jay Roach's ('Austin Powers' trilogy) highly entertaining biographical drama about the famed screenwriter Dalton Trumbo who, with many of his contemporaries, was jailed and blacklisted for his communistic political beliefs in the late 1940's. Co-starring Diane Lane, John Goodman and Helen Mirren, the film tells the story of how the Oscar winning writer and many like him had to write psuedonymously and for very little pay in order to stay in the industry that had so cruelly rejected them.

Adapted from Bruce Cook's similarly titled biography 'Trumbo' by screenwriter John McNamara, the movie explores the horrors of the blacklist from the points of view of those directly affected by it and as a result, finds a great deal of sympathy and respect for its characters. As mentioned before, Cranston is absolutely terrific in the eponymous role, bringing an astonishing amount of both humility and egocentricity to his portrayal of the notoriously tetchy and stubborn writer - a key scene where Trumbo adamently defends his ideologies in a court full of screaming detractors shows the multi-Emmy award winning actor at the height of his formidable dramatic powers.

There is also a fine performance from Diane Lane who stars as Dalton Trumbo's loyal yet increasingly frustrated wife while Helen Mirren vigorously chews the scenery as a venomous media reporter who uses her fierce anti-red agenda to sell more papers and destroying multiple careers in the process. However, it is John Goodman who steals the show as the sweary Frank King, a quick to anger B-Movie producing titan who hires Trumbo to tidy up the scripts of his trashy productions - a fantastic role that brings to mind Mike Starr's equally foul mouthed Z movie producer George Weiss in Tim Burton's brilliantly uplifting 1994 biopic 'Ed Wood'.

But while 'Trumbo' certainly acts the part, it unfortunately doesn't speak it. Ironically,  for a film about one of Hollywood's most celebrated screenwriters, it distinctly lacks a script worthy of its acerbic material. Quite often characters deliver lines that verge on caricature and while the entirety of the cast give their all, the dour dialogue really detracts from their fine performances. Despite this sizeable setback however, 'Trumbo' still manages to be a very enjoyable film that tells one of the darkest chapters in Hollywood history in a way which is thought provoking, highly absorbing and, at times, very funny. While he faces stiff competition from the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Eddie Redmayne this year, Bryan Cranston certainly deserves his Academy Award nomination and with 'Trumbo' now firmly under his belt, things seem to point to a career that will be just as critically successful on the big screen than it is on the small screen.