Citizen Rules...Cinemaesque Chat-n-Review

I didn't initially get this movie, until just a few moments ago when I was reading about Dalton Trumbo. Then the movie's theme clicked and I knew Trumbo was writing about his own misfortune at the hands McCarthyism.

In the movie Kirk Douglas plays a modern day cowboy. He's a good natured and fiercely independent man. He loves his horse and his freedom...In the opening scene we see him riding alone on the opening prairie. He comes to a barbed wire fence, that blocks his way. He complains to his horse that the land should be free to pass, so he cuts the fence with a pair of wire cutters that he keeps in his pocket.

It's only now that I understand how that scene is symbolic of the lost freedoms McCarthyism and black listing brought to America. Indeed the entire movie is about a changing America. Maybe even more telling is that: after Kirk Douglas rides into a little southwest town he visits an old friends house, there the wife (Gena Rowlands) tells him her husband is in jail for helping illegal Mexicans get food and water.

Douglas could take the easy road and move on, after all his friend only has 2 years in jail. But instead he ruins his own freedom by standing up for his friend, by busting him out of jail. Which then puts Douglas on the run. Just like Trumbo put himself on the line and ended up out of work, out of money and literally on the run.

When I think of the film in those terms, I see the brilliance of Trumbo's script.



Kirk Douglas is very likable as the not to bright but loyal cowboy. The loyalty and love he shows his horse says a lot about the man. George Kennedy makes a really good-bad cop, the kind you love to hate. Balancing that out is Walter Matheu as the sheriff who understands what the cowboy is all about and even admires him, and yet he still has to do his duty and bring him to 'justices'.