Director Karl Francis once again totally fails to distinguish himself with this clumsily directed drama about McCarthy blacklisted writer-director, Herbert Biberman. Subtle and intelligent performances from Jeff Goldblum and Greta Scacchi are totally wasted in this otherwise uninspiring little film. The cinematography is fine; the editing makes the best of what it has to work with, which is not much. The problem lies entirely with the direction, which fails to pack even the slightest emotional punch, which is quite a feat considering the source material. What's worse is that it is liberally sprinkled with the kind of sickly B-movie idealism that I thought mainstream cinema had grown out of in the mid-seventies. The results come over as amateurish and basically unintelligent, not even worth a straight to video. This movie is a master class in how to ruin a great idea with incompetent direction. Please Mr Francis, just stop making films - nobody is interested.
Review of One of the Hollywood Ten
