Review of Guilty by Suspicion

Good grief, so much talent and such an important part of American history and we get an utter and total mess. Hollywood, in this self loving self involved glop, comes off very nicely. Many directors and actors and writers actually were involved in communist organizations which, in fact, were front groups for the Soviets. The whole disastrous period is very complex, very little of which you get here. In fact it's almost asinine in its propaganda festival representation of the era. The anti-communists are laughably evil and their victims are helpless heroes caught up in a red baiting machine. Such a missed opportunity, the movie ends up being boring, inane, and ultimately silly. It's really too bad, because Deniro, as usual, is amazing to watch. George Wendt is almost as good in his performance. It was interesting to see Tom Sizemore in an early role.

Perhaps the silliest thing about the movie were the captions at the end heralding the heroic actions of these people who dared to stand up to Congress. Blah, blah, blah. Maybe all those blacklisted writers had actual talent, they really should have looked them up, because whoever wrote this bilge SHOULD have been blacklisted, not for being a communist, but for being a bad writer.

It's better to know the history, or to see "The Front" instead of this garbage. At least Woody Allen is funny in that movie, though it somewhat suffers from the same problems. At least that movie is very well done, very entertaining, all the things this one isn't.

Deniro is so good, and this movie is so bad. A crime.