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Plot

Frank Pierson's made-for-cable adaptation of Nicholas VonHoffman's biography, Citizen Cohn stars James Woods as the controversial lawyer Roy Cohn. The film is structured as a series of flashbacks while Cohn lies in a New York hospital dying of AIDS. In the 1940s and early '50s, Cohn became one of the most powerful men in the country after becoming an important associate of Senator Joseph McCarthy (Joe Don Baker) and his Communist witch hunts. The film recounts those turbulent times and features portrayals of such real-life figures as J. Edgar Hoover (Pat Hingle), Dashiell Hammett (Frederic Forrest), Cardinal Spellman (Daniel Benzali), and Walter Winchell (Joseph Bologna).
MPAA Rating:
Genre(s):
Drama
Run Time:
112min.
DVD Release Date:
07/10/2001
Director(s):
Frank Pierson
Starring:
James Woods , Joe Don Baker , Lee Grant , Joseph Bologna , Ed Flanders
Themes:
Social Injustice,Political Corruption,Rise and Fall Stories
Tone:
Biting,Matter-of-Fact,Satirical,Wry
Keywords:
AIDS,Communism,McCarthyism,Red-Scare,anti-Semitism,bigotry,homosexual,hypocrisy,lawyer,politician,terminal-illness,witchhunt [persecution]
Language:
English