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.
Review of Guilty by Suspicion
