A personal triumph for co-writer-producer-director-star Warren Beatty, who won the Oscar for his direction and gives a cautious, interesting performance as early-1900s American journalist John Reed, who shared a tumultuous courtship and marriage to Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton),a socialite and self-described writer. Reed, a radical political activist, became intrigued with the Communist teachings of Russia and, with Bryant, defended the Bolsheviks and opposed American intervention. Their acquaintances, a community of activists and artists, included anarchist Emma Goldman (masterfully played by Oscar-winner Maureen Stapleton) and playwright Eugene O'Neill (Jack Nicholson),who also had a passionate affair with Bryant (one "guest witness" speculates the Reed-Bryant marriage was actually a menage a trois that included O'Neill). Beatty's film is too long at 195 minutes--and is far better in its early stages, so momentum tends to decrease as the story progresses--however, its an actors' paradise and everyone brings something special to the fore. Keaton's chattering sometimes feels anachronistic ("yeah, yeah...uh-huh, uh-huh"),but she works the camera mercilessly with her big, enchanting smile (to knock us dead) and sad, questioning stare. Keaton manages to translate her innermost thoughts into expressions, and her penetrating scenes with Nicholson are quietly-charged and fascinating, although her romance with Beatty's Reed feels somewhat muffled. Beatty, content to let his co-stars shine, has chosen to remain reserved; some may applaud the performance as successfully subtle, yet he might have shown us a bit more of his own personality (it would help in a three-hour-plus movie such as this). The epic-sized "Reds" is a strange melodrama, at times, and an overachiever, but with surprising humor in the mix and the fire of determination at its core. **1/2 from ****

RELEASED IN 1981 and written & directed by Warren Beatty, "Reds" stars Beatty as real-life radical American journalist and socialist, John "Jack" Reed, who becomes involved with the Russian revolution, and hopes to bring its spirit and idealism to America. In the meantime he romances "progressive" writer Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton),who also goes to Russia. Jack Nicholson plays the wrench in their romantic wheels, Eugene O'Neill. Maureen Stapleton & Gene Hackman are also on hand.

Throughout the movie there are interjections from aged people who actually knew John Reed, Louise Bryant and Eugene O'Neill. I found this an interesting touch.

The first hour and twenty minutes take place in the states during WWI, starting in Portland, Oregon, and then switching to the East Coast when the couple decides to move there (New York City & Provincetown, Massachusetts). Only then do events start to perk-up when they head to France and then Russia. Until that point there's a lot of relationship shenanigans between the three (Jack, Louise & Gene) and endless talk about communism, socialist ideals and workers' rights.

The tone of the drama is akin to a Robert Altman film; you can tell Beatty learned a thing or two from him with "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" (1971). The movie's certainly ambitious and well-acted. Those with interest in the period will find much to like here. Unfortunately, it's not all that compelling and it lacks the epic stature, nigh-surrealism and jaw-dropping cinematography of "Dr. Zhivago" (1965). Reed's a misguided character because his communistic ideals proved to be a nightmare for the Russian people. To the film's credit, this is effectively shown in the last act in a potent discussion between Reed and Emma (Stapleton) yet, even then, Reed didn't "get" it, which is typically the case with boneheaded libertines who insist on forcing their fatally flawed ideology on the rest of the populace.

While communism sounds good on paper, it just doesn't work in practice. It's a demotivating system that ensures that everyone's equally poor, except of course for the ruling state class, which essentially becomes communistic royalty. To all intents and purposes they are the reviled "bourgeoisie" and the common people are the "proletariat," both of which communism sought to eliminate in the first place, which makes communism hypocritical. Furthermore, communism leads to all kinds of suffering and corruption, like waiting in long lines or bribing doctors and sellers for services & merchandise, not to mention how the state itself becomes "god" and thus demands the 'worship' of the people. Sure, capitalism has its downside, but it's an all-around superior system, which is why people from communistic states flee to capitalistic countries and not vice versa.

The temperamental and non-traditional Louise Bryant has her points of interest, but ultimately she isn't a sympathetic character (for one thing, she's duplicitous). Not for a second do I believe that she bluntly said to Reed in the yard outside a lecture hall: "Jack, I want to see you with your pants down" (rolling my eyes).

THE MOVIE RUNS 195 minutes (3 hours, 15 minutes) and was shot in England, Finland, New York City, California, Spain and Sweden. ADDITIONAL WRITER: Trevor Griffiths.

GRADE: C

Warren Beatty's magnum opus Reds was presented as a revival film official selection of the New York Film Festival 2006 to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of its original appearance.

Reds's greatest virtue may be that it's grand, without being pompous, film-making. It's a film that takes some pride in being big and turbulent and unruly. It's important, but it's not tidy. It's in part certainly very much about ideology, but it avoids sharp, well-honed edges or large hard-etched "points." John Reed (played by the film's impresario, its sole producer, director, co-author, and star, Warren Beatty) was a man who happened to be able to write a first-hand account of the Bolshevik revolution, a long-time bestseller called Ten Days That Shook the World. At that time early in the twentieth century in America Reed arguably was a central figure, if only in the sense that during his time in Greenwich Village he managed to be (as he wanted to be) consistently at the center of things American political and cultural – when he wasn't in Russia (which was pretty central then too). Roger Ebert thinks the movie "never succeeds in convincing us that the feuds between the American socialist parties were much more than personality conflict and ego-bruisings" (that may depend on how hard we need to be convinced to begin with),but we do care about Reds (Ebert thinks) as "a traditional Hollywood romantic epic, a love story written on the canvas of history, as they used to say in the ads…it is the thinking man's Doctor Zhivago, told from the other side, of course." What about the choice of Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton as the lovers? Initially that may seem an odd and chemistry-poor decision. (I'm not sure I overcome that impression.) But arguably the film takes long enough with each of its main characters to make them into rounded people, complex enough to be attractive to others and to each other. Beatty uses the romance to hold the story together, and in doing so, he follows a conventional enough scheme. Reds stands out from other American mainstream products – and for all its maverick central force, it remains that – in its attempt to deal seriously with complex socio-political events during a turbulent period, and to approach them in an open-minded way. Beatty weaves other significant characters into the fabric of his drama, notably the leftist activist Emma Goldman (Maureen Stapleton, who got the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress) and the radical editor Max Eastman (Edward Herrmann),who are members of the same political-intellectual salon into which he brings Louise, as is the playwright Eugene O'Neill (Jack Nicholson).

Beatty's filmic recreation of John Reed is good in not being too serious or too idealized: in having a silly side Beatty's Reed perhaps has something of himself. Reed's lover Louise Bryant (Keaton),though originally a bourgeois lady from Portland, is similarly rounded; she's led by her relationship to Reed to develop other facets and strengths, and further enlarged as a personality through the way the film depicts her long affair with the alcoholic O'Neill, played by a toned-down but emotionally potent Nicholson. His discontent and negative energy are disturbing. Personalities anchor the film; but in some of the political debates and adventures one loses track and forgets why Reed is somewhere in Russia. He is at the center of things. But why he is where he is otherwise at certain moments is uncertain. In its ambition to keep juggling the many balls of major personalities and major political currents and historical events, Reds loses some of its narrative clarity and momentum over time. Complex political and historical currents are tracked, but the emotional trajectory loses its momentum. Nonetheless the film develops sweep in its length of three and a quarter hours. One walks out convinced that the material was complex enough to be worthy of such length, even if Beatty and his co-writer Trevor Griffiths could not whip it all into shape.

Whether it's all worth it on the stage of international cinema or not, this is a film of historical interest as a great independent project, begun logically in the Seventies, but completed right in the middle of Hollywood by an American intelligent and engaged enough to be star, director, writer, and producer, to raise $35 million to do it, and to make more or less the movie he wanted to make – right in the middle, so to speak, of a wave of conservatism and yuppiedom, in the early Eighties, when people were thinking about making money and making it, when Ronald Reagon was President of the United States. What more appropriate time to reexamine this achievement than in the middle of the second term of George Bush II? No doubt Beatty took on this story because he was interested in a time in America when it was rife with left-wing politics. But he is realistic, and he made a Hollywood movie, with big stars and romance. And that's what it is and remains. But one can't imagine anybody else making it, and that's what makes it worth revisiting. Warren Beatty is an admirable maverick in the clone-heavy world of Southern California media-moguldom. He's a real person. And this is his great performance as a person and as an artist. I first saw it with a group of real communists. "We're "reds," they said as we walked out. The theater staff looked impressed. I was bowled over by their pride. Not everyone watches this film as a "traditional Hollywood romantic epic." It would never have been made if that were all it was. Its grandeur and ambition are still moving and it must not be forgotten. For a more pungent treatment of a political and social theme starring Beatty, consider Hal Ashby's 1975 Shampoo.