Trumbo – Blu-Ray Movie Review

This is the amazing true story of Dalton Trumbo, an American screenwriter who was a member of the Communist Party in the 1940’s. This subsequently led to him getting blacklisted in 1947 along with several other movie-makers. This group was dubbed "The Hollywood Ten" and it included Hollywood producers, directors and writers. Their blacklisting subsequently became a criminal concern when the men were found in contempt of Congress and sentenced to terms in Federal prison. Trumbo continued writing and his work made its way to the screen where he miraculously won two Academy Awards during his time on the blacklist – "Roman Holiday" and "The Brave One". Bryan Cranston plays Trumbo, Diane Lane his wife and Helen Mirren plays Hedda Hopper.

The story of Dalton Trumbo can be viewed as being about free speech and the oppression of those with ideas that are not in the mainstream context. And I think this is a healthy view for a film with this theme and story line. I did not know much about Trumbo before watching this movie and I am glad I learned more about him through this vehicle. It is about an important chapter in American history and informs how we should deal with varying viewpoints in our society today. That is we should be accepting of other people’s ideas and do not persecute them or run them down just because they have different ideas. So there’s that but also the acting and all the other movie-making stuff that made for this to be one heck of a great movie and I heartily recommend it!

I could not find any artifacts or anomalies with the video on this disc. In fact, the image was sterling throughout. Take a look at the screen grabs accompanying this review for an idea of what I mean. Cranston’s Hawaiian shirt was especially sharp, detailed and colorful as were the faces, sets and backgrounds. This is a very solid video presentation.

The audio was similarly well done. The voices were clear, up front and very legible throughout. I also enjoyed the track’s ability to paint in the spaces in each scene with excellent ambiance. Music was well recorded and presented naturally.

The package I reviewed was a single disc affair with the Blu-ray only as well as an included Digital HD code. There were but two on-disc extras. They are both short featurettes done in HD – "Who Is Trumbo?" and "Bryan Cranston Becomes Trumbo".