Veteran producer Irwin Winkler’s 1990 directorial debut, recreating the paranoid climate that enveloped early-’50s Hollywood during the anti-communist witch-hunts. Robert De Niro is the fictitious RKO director watching lives, morals and ethics come apart under the strain. A clear-eyed and heartfelt history lesson, with a Martin Scorsese cameo that’s a barely disguised portrait of blacklist exile Joseph Losey.
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