Like Communism the film was at least a good concept

Warren Beattys Reds (1981) is an ambitious epic based on a period of John Reed's life. Reed was an American Socialist, who fought hard for the Socialist cause during and after WW1. If this sounds like someone you wouldn't want to spend three and half hours of you're life discovering then your partly right. The politics of this movie bored me to death, and unfortunately to much time is spent on the politics, and it isn't the fact that is was Communism, Socialism or any other political agenda that has negative connotation, it was just that it wasn't interesting. 

As long and drawn out as the political scenes were, they were the only negative aspect of this film, and its unfortunate because everything else about this movie was great. You can tell that this was a passion project for Beatty (wish he had been passionate about a different topic) who went on to win the Best Director Academy Award for his work behind the camera. As deserving as his praise for his direction was I think just as much should be made about his performance. As I had mentioned the politics of this film were not relatable but Beatty as Reed was charming, funny and human. He could have played this too serious, and made the mans life solely about the "cause" but thankfully Beatty is smarter than that and rescues the film from itself. 

In fact all the performances across the board were great, especially Diane Keaton as the on again, off again Mrs. Reed. I never had full appreciation for Keaton until I saw this film, and now I consider her one of the greats. Like Beatty she plays this character as three dimensional, and makes you understand and sympathize for her as she deals with balancing her socialistic and free love ideals with her emotions and we see the disconnect between the two aspects of her life portrayed perfectly. 

This film has beautiful cinematography by Vittorio Storaro (who deservingly won the Academy Award) and the film takes us through revolutions, wars and jail cells in Russia. It gives us a love triangle with the third party played by a even more creepy than normal Jack Nicholson. It gives us a genuine love story between Keaton and Beatty. Reds gives us everything a sweeping epic should, but it gets caught up in its own historic self importance and I think misinterprets audience reaction to this mans significance. Beatty doesn't try and preach anything in this movie, he may just be trying to hard to put everything into the film. If Beatty had cut an hour of politics out of this movie you would be reading a 5 star review. 

**1/2