Comment

Dec 31, 2017andreajesse rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
If you don't try to compare this to some of the Coen Brothers other great films, this one holds up rather well. It's 1950s Hollywood and movie studio executive, Eddie Mannix (James Brolin), has a lot on his plate. Spoiler alert - one of his big stars, Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), has been kidnapped and is being held for ransom by "Hollywood-10" type screenwriters. They "intellectualize" about their cause and Baird buys in, hook, line, and sinker. All is tongue-in-cheek here with Scarlett Johansson as a smart-mouthed Esther Williams type and Channing Tatum as swishy song and dance man turned Soviet sympathizer. Frances McDormand has a hilarious moment as film editor while showing dailies to Mannix. Mannix has a crisis of conscious which seems a bit forced as he goes regularly to confession, but it serves to give the movie meaning. Of course there is impeccable detail to time and place - the kind the brothers always deliver. This 2016 film serves as antidote to 2015's 'Trumbo' which takes a more serious look at the fallout that befell those who identified as communists in early Hollywood. Maybe I'm taking an intellectual leap here, but I think the brothers are saying - don't look to the group ("Study Group") to tell you how to see the world, instead, look inside yourself for the answers.