Trumbo
General release

Dalton Trumbo liked to write about men who take on the system and, heroically, fail. His screenplays for Spartacus, Johnny Got His Gun and, especially, Lonely Are the Brave were unforgettable examples of his profound sense of the power and dignity of standing up for what you believe in. Such sentiments mirror what Trumbo attempted to do throughout his career. But he paid a terribly heavy price and Jay Roach's patchy if riveting film focusing on his fall from grace reveals one man's struggle for freedom of expression in a community that simultaneously lauded and banished him.

It's extraordinary to think that Trumbo ''secretly'' won two Oscars - for the screenplays of Roman Holiday and The Brave One - when McCarthyism had led him to be blacklisted by Hollywood, banned from writing because he was a member of the Communist Party. When the Second World War ended, he was the world's highest-paid writer. Then, for 13 years - until Kirk Douglas demanded his name be added to the credits of Spartacus - he was labelled a traitor, bankrupted, jailed and forced to eke out a living by writing mostly trashy scripts under assumed names.

These dark decades of post-war American fascism have not always transferred well to the big screen. Stories about self-righteous Commie writers seldom do. But Trumbo is different. It is about a man, not a scandal, a family not a bunch of politicians, a study of the determination to work rather than bleeding-heart liberalism (though there is a smattering of that too).

Bryan Cranston is phenomenally good in the title role - an irascible, eccentric genius who found writing inspiration in the bath tub and with a parrot on his shoulder. He is the film's greatest strength. Everyone else - and there are far too many incidental roles, something Trumbo the screenwriter would have abhorred - feels a little leaden and underdone in comparison. Only Helen Mirren as the vile gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, who forces the studios to exile Trumbo and his fellow reds - and whose rabid antisemitism reveals her hatred for the very people who had made her rich and famous - grabs the attention.

The film perhaps tries to do too much - it's peppered by walk-on parts for John Wayne, Edward G Robinson, Kirk Douglas and Louis B Mayer as if their presence will brighten up a story about people prevented from inventing stuff by sitting at their typewriters.

And indeed they do. But this is a tragedy dressed up as a triumph and, as such, doesn't quite ring true. Hollywood has never truly mastered the art of holding an undistorted mirror up to itself. Still, Cranston is superb and Trumbo is a moving reminder of one man's determination to beat the system. It's not nearly as good as Lonely Are The Brave though…