Reds(1981)- User Reviews

To enjoy what is easily one of the top films (Along with Raging Bull and Platoon) of the 1980's. The most incrediable thing about this picture is that it got made at all, particularly in the decade that gave us Ewoks and Jerry Brukheimer films. Reds is a complex and compeling human drama about a man who let his strong politics clowd his better judgement. Beatty is no Brando on screen, but he usaly has the good sense to surround himself with a top notch supporting cast and allow himself to be basicly an onscreen narrarator. Although the script is fair and complex, it is by no means easy on Reed, who destroyed his personal realtionships and his own health in his quixotic misadventure that finaly led him to become littel more than a puppet for the Russian communists. Beatty, an outspoken liberal in real life, pulls no punches in portraying Soviet communists as murderous savages who quickly dismissed their professed peacefull utopian motives and began a systematic dismantaling of all outlets for descent, culminating in mass murders of anybody they perceived as political rivals. Actingwise, the picture belongs to Diane Keaton, who portrays Reed's real life wife and best critic, Louis Bryant. Keaton is fabolous as always, stealing every scene she's in as she potrays Bryant as both a strong and vunerable, driven by equal parts passion for her own beliefs and love for Reed, flawed charecter and all. Another great perofmance is given by Jack Nicholson, who portrays playwrite Eugene O'Neil. The stroy presents O'Neil as a contempary of Reed and a rival for the affections of Louis Bryant. The scenes between Keaton and Nicholson are real standouts. Behind the cammera Beatty hired Italian DP Vitto Starro (I hope I spelled it right?) who was hot off his amazing work on Apocolyspe Now. Vitto takes us from the still- life like world of Portland society (where both Reed and Bryant start out) through the hussle and bussel of Bohemian Greenich to the epic marches of the November revolutions and across the sprawling tundras of Finaland without missing a beat, everyframe picture perfect.
I said it when I began, this film is a standout in a decade that really represented a low point in intellgente filmaking. It showcases Beatty at the height of his fame and power. Reed's own nieve infatuation with socailism and eventual disapointment and disallusionment with what it hath wrought is clearly analigious to Beatty's generation's own hopes in the sixties, as a new generation rose to power in Hollywood and promised a new hope for the future but flew too high and soon saw their hopes dashed as the wreckage of the old Hollywood system was replaced by the New Hollywood of multinational corportate cinema and summer blockbusters. One of the most compelling and well devolped films of it's generation, Reds is truley one for the ages.