Lee Eisenberg
Irwin Winkler's "Guilty by Suspicion" looks at the Hollywood blacklist, with Robert DeNiro as a director targeted by HUAC. It's well known that the Hollywood bigwigs were only too happy to collaborate with HUAC. One of the most effective scenes is when they're watching TV and see a report on the Rosenbergs, and how HUAC thinks that any pain felt by the Rosenbergs' sons is a small price to pay for national security (sounds like something that al-Qaeda or ISIS would say, doesn't it?). As for the scene where someone writes down the license plate, I understand that they did that in real life.This is one part of history that particularly needs to get remembered. When some right-wing ideologue calls for rooting out "the other" in the name of Americanism, it simply means that he wants to stay in power at all costs. It's worth noting that Franklin Roosevelt was negotiating with the Soviet Union to make sure that there would be no more wars once WWII was over, but he died and so Truman canceled those plans. Despite having negotiated the division of Europe with the USSR, Truman went along with the claims by McCarthy and Co. that the leftists helped the USSR take over Eastern Europe.Definitely a movie that I recommend. This topic took on a new relevance in the so called War on Terrorism.
OllieSuave-007
I first watched this movie in an 11th grade English class. While it wasn't a truly exciting or action-packed film from what I remember, it was an educational one. It shows director David Merrill (Robert De Nero) returning to America in the McCarthy era, where a Communist witch-hunt is sweeping through Hollywood. He then finds himself blacklisted for not cooperating with the authorities.This film carefully delves upon the aftermath of how Communism affected Hollywood and what the cause and effects it inflicted upon the country's citizens. Throughout the movie, you might be left wondering if Communism back in the day was a red herring or a real threat to be reckoned with.The acting was OK, but some of the actors, particular De Nero, went overboard at times. Again, from what I remember, it wasn't an exciting movie and I've found it to be quite boring at times. However, you would learn a few things, history wise.Grade C
Michael Neumann
The anti-Communist witch-hunts of the late 1940s will always be a dark chapter in American history, but this heavy-handed melodrama offers no insight into any of the causes or consequences. Robert De Niro (in a role any lesser actor could have played just as well) stars as a Hollywood film director declared persona non grata for his refusal to name names before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, but his blacklisting looks more like a blessing in disguise: curing his workaholic habits and reuniting him with his wife and son. The biggest problem with producer-turned-director Irwin Winkler's skin-deep screenplay is an unfortunate tendency toward soap opera histrionics, with most of the plot revolving around dramatic suicides, drunken tantrums, and one of De Niro's trademark rip-the-phone-off-the wall-and-throw-it-across-the-room scenes. The climactic hearing is just an excuse for some politically correct soapbox grandstanding, and of course there's a rolling moral before the end credits, always a tacit admission that a film has failed to communicate its message elsewhere.
preppy-3
Movie about the House Committee on Un-American Activities and their attack on supposed communism in Hollywood. It takes place in 1951 and director David Merrill (Robert DeNiro) returns from France to find Hollywood and his friends living in terror of being called to testify in front of the committee. If you didn't name names your career was officially over and you were (unofficially) suspected of being a communist. Merrill refuses to name anybody and his life becomes a nightmare. It also affects his ex-wife Ruth (Annette Bening) and friend Bunny Baxter (George Wendt).This movie has good intentions and it's great that anybody made a film dealing with the horrendous witch hunts in the 1950s--but this film just doesn't work. It's simplistic to a ridiculous degree--EVERYTHING is dumbed down so anyone can get it. Also the plot is obvious (I was always one step ahead of this) and the movie is overlong. However the movie looks just great and the music is wonderful. Acting really helps this one--DeNiro is a little subdued but still good; Bening is given the thankless ex-wife role but pulls it off; Wendt overdoes it at times but is basically pretty good and Patricia Wettig (as a friend who cracks under the strain) is WAY over the top to an embarrassing degree. Also it's amusing to see Martin Scorses in a small role as a director. Ultimately the film is too bland to really work--but the courtroom sequence at the end does provide real fireworks. Worth seeing if you know nothing about what happened in Hollywood back then. I can only give it a 5.
AD
