Roy Cohn was truly a brilliant man. He graduated from law school before most people even graduated from college. During his prosecuting of the Rosenburgs and his stint as McCarthy's assistant, he was looked upon as a rising star, a "young Commie catching comet" as Walter Winchell called him. For all his panache, brilliane and theatrics, however, Cohn was nothing more then a liar and a crook and was disbarred shortly before his death from AIDs. It made me angry that this man was so brilliant and we could have reaped a great benefit from his talents if he had properly and honestly applied them to helping people. Like so many, however, Cohn was corrupted by power and greed. I have rarely seen an actor who can play a bad guy the way that James Woods can, this man is awesome in every way and they couldn't have picked a better man to play this real life meglomaniac and monster. Woods is so chilling as Cohn that you almost feel that his dying of AIDs is God's punishment. He is sneering in our faces all throughout this film. I see nothing wrong with calling Roy Cohn a monster, but he is like a Frankenstein monster because we made him and let him get away with it. He was a Jew who persecuted Jews and a gay man who persecuted gays. The most disturbing scene for me in the film is where the dying Cohn is literally "haunted" by the Rosenburgs, a victim of the Witch Hunt he drove to suicide and even Senator McCarthy and Joseph Welch (the lawyer who helped bring him down during the infamous Army-McCarthy hearings). Its hard to believe that we could have another Salem Witchcraft period of hysteria in our country but we did less then 50 years ago because of two demagogues named Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn. Joe Don Baker did a fine job as the infamous Wisconsin Senator but Peter Boyle was the one who did a masterful performance in the 1977 tv film Tail Gunner Joe. They re-enact the scene during the hearings (which were the first of their kind carried live on tv) where Joseph Welch called down the wrath of God on this tyrant in a way no one would ever forget "I don't think I ever really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness...if it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty I would do so...I like to think I'm a gentle man but your forgiveness will have to come from someone else...have you left no sense of decency sir?...at long last have you left no sense of decency? He could have easily said the same thing to Roy Cohn and the answer would have been no.
Review of Citizen Cohn
