"There are many angry and ignorant people in the world and they seem to be breeding in record numbers". Cranston is a magnetic on screen presence and Mirren is surprisingly vile, great of course, but truly vile. I'd wondered why I'd not heard of this fellow. That he wrote most of his best stuff (including Spartacus) under pseudonyms having being pushed out of Hollywood due to his politics explains a lot. It's not all dark though, in fact it's all delivered quite pleasantly, with plenty of humour. Not least with Trumbo squaring up defiantly against the John Wayne character in a particularly amusing scene. I've no idea what The Duke was like in real life, but here he's painted a little bit like Charlton Heston, a gun toting good ol boy arsehole. It's a scene of brain against brawn, intelligence verses paranoia. It may be a slightly bleak story, but blimey if it's not great!
8/10
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