Overview: "Shocking" (Boston Globe) and "compelling" (The Washington Post), the feature-film adaptation of Christopher Trumbo's play about his father, writer Dalton Trumbo, documents the rise of Dalton's career in Hollywood and his subsequent public humiliation from being among the "Hollywood Ten" blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1940s for communist associations.

DVD Verdict: Christopher Trumbo wrote a play about his father, novelist and screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, and it has been produced both on Broadway and by regional theater companies over the last 10 years. The story behind the elder Trumbo's blacklisting during the communist "witch hunts" in the 1950s is important and needed wider exposure.

This film, which played briefly in theaters, is, thankfully now on home video. It is essential viewing for every high school student to show what can happen when people act, rather than think. And it shows how, for a period in the 1950s the words "freedom" and "fair trial" were not as common in the US as the Constitution says they should be.

Direct Peter Askin used the younger Trumbo's script as a jumping off point but opened up the story through creative use of archival film interviews with the screenwriter combined with well known actors (Nathan Lane, Donald Sutherland, Michael Douglas - whose father Kirk starred in "Spartacus", one of Trumbo's efforts and appears here briefly- and Joan Allen among others) reciting Trumbo's own letters to friends and colleagues.

These letters are often quite long and are, in effect, short stories. The performances by the actors are truly stunning! We see brief excerpts for films that Trumbo scripted (whether he was given credit or not on the screen) to show how his values were reflected in the characters' words. These films include "Papillion", "Roman Holiday" and Exodus.

If you know the history of the blacklist you will find this film a reminder. If the word "blacklist" means nothing to you, then you owe it to yourself to see this film and show it to your family as well. [SR] This is a Widescreen Presentation (1.85:1) enhanced for 16x9 TVs and comes with the Special Features of:

Deleted Scenes