I can't remember where I was in the early 90's when HBO first showed this film, I thought had been an avid watcher of HBO films ever since "Barbarians At The Gate" and "And the Band Played on" but I missed this really good film! I just received "Citizen Cohn" on DVD - and it shocked the daylights out of me to know that ... people like this ever existed. Scary.
This is the story of a potentially brilliant man destined for great things, Roy Cohn (played by James Woods in a stunning performance) - who's brilliance obviously went to his head with his pursuit of power and manipulation via politics. This film gets under your skin because it contains dramatizations of events that actually happened. The drama made we want to find out the facts as they are really laid out in history. Roy Cohn was as power drunk as you can get, using anyone and everyone to rise in that power.
In this dramatization you see that as a child Roy Cohn was heavily influenced by his pretentious mother (played by Lee Grant) and was basically ignored by his judge father (played by Josef Sommer). Roy grows up to be an attorney "on the rise" and eventually rises up to be alcoholic Sen. McCarthy (played by Joe Don Baker) right arm in exposing those against American Democracy by creating lists of names and testimonies of sneaky communists or those suspected of communism. While Roy is allegedly fighting for this freedom and democracy, he leads his own life "undercover", and justly so, since he was a closet homosexual. But 'till his dying day he claimed he wasn't. And his dying days came soon, since he had AIDS.
In last days of his illness, all of his 'demons' of his past came back to haunt him, including his most 'famous', Ethel Rosenberg. This was amazing to see. The scenes, filled with questions, pathos, obvious hate and some humor are the most impactive. They recall his life, his deeds and his interactions with many of the top players at the top of the political heap at that time.
"Citizen Cohn" is a film laying out an overview of a life of a man who could have been great, but was horrid. Even in death, he was horrid and in constant denial of what he did and what he really was.
This is the story of a potentially brilliant man destined for great things, Roy Cohn (played by James Woods in a stunning performance) - who's brilliance obviously went to his head with his pursuit of power and manipulation via politics. This film gets under your skin because it contains dramatizations of events that actually happened. The drama made we want to find out the facts as they are really laid out in history. Roy Cohn was as power drunk as you can get, using anyone and everyone to rise in that power.
In this dramatization you see that as a child Roy Cohn was heavily influenced by his pretentious mother (played by Lee Grant) and was basically ignored by his judge father (played by Josef Sommer). Roy grows up to be an attorney "on the rise" and eventually rises up to be alcoholic Sen. McCarthy (played by Joe Don Baker) right arm in exposing those against American Democracy by creating lists of names and testimonies of sneaky communists or those suspected of communism. While Roy is allegedly fighting for this freedom and democracy, he leads his own life "undercover", and justly so, since he was a closet homosexual. But 'till his dying day he claimed he wasn't. And his dying days came soon, since he had AIDS.
In last days of his illness, all of his 'demons' of his past came back to haunt him, including his most 'famous', Ethel Rosenberg. This was amazing to see. The scenes, filled with questions, pathos, obvious hate and some humor are the most impactive. They recall his life, his deeds and his interactions with many of the top players at the top of the political heap at that time.
"Citizen Cohn" is a film laying out an overview of a life of a man who could have been great, but was horrid. Even in death, he was horrid and in constant denial of what he did and what he really was.