Citizen Cohn (1992)
Release Date: Aug 22, 1992 Wide
Release Date: Aug 22, 1992 Wide
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Average Rating: 3.1/5
User Ratings: 92
Movie Info
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
Aug 22, 1992 Wide
Jul 10, 2001
HBO Video
Cast
-
James Woods
Roy Marcus Cohn -
Joe Don Baker
Senator Joseph McCarthy -
Lee Grant
Dora -
Joseph Bologna
Walter Winchell -
Ed Flanders
Welch -
Pat Hingle
Hoover -
Chuck Aber
Senator McClellan -
Lamont Arnold
Male Nurse -
Steve Aronson
Judge Kaufman -
Daniel Benzali
Cardinal Spellman -
Bernard Canepari
New York Judge -
Sam Coppola
Carmine Gelanti -
David Earle
Chauffeur -
Tovah Feldshuh
Iva Schlesinger -
John Finn
Senator Charles Potter -
Frederic Forrest
Hammett -
Frances Foster
First Annie Lee Moss -
Allen Garfield
Abe Feller -
David Marshall Grant
Robert F. Kennedy -
Fanni Green
Juror -
Joe Grifasi
Gerald Walpin -
Karen Ludwig
Ethel Rosenberg -
John McMartin
Older Doctor -
Larry John Meyers
Frank Raichle -
Zachary Mott
Sam Garfield -
Novella Nelson
Second Annie Lee Moss -
Jeffrey Nordling
G. David Schine -
Joseph Scorsiani
Milo Gandini -
Robin Thomas
Reporter -
Daniel von Bargen
Clyde Tolson -
Don Wadsworth
English Reporter #2 -
Rick Warner
Robert Morgenthau Jr. -
Fritz Weaver
Senator Everett Dirksen -
Peter Maloney
Ray Kaplan -
John Seitz
Army Secretary Stevens -
Josef Sommer
Albert Cohn -
Lance Lewman
Young Doctor -
Patricia Dunnock
Female Nurse -
Kate Young
French Reporter -
Daniel Hugh Kelly
Congressman Neil Gallag...
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It's a common motif to have Roy Cohn haunted by Ethel Rosenberg on his deathbed. It's an intriguing mental image, certainly. Roy Cohn would assuredly have known that, even if Ethel Rosenberg was a spy (she probably wasn't), anything she could have done was substantially less than was done by people who weren't executed. The Rosenbergs simply didn't have access to much in the way of nuclear secrets. If Roy Cohn had a conscience, which is a questionable idea at best, one can imagine him being tormented by it just before he died.
In fact, I don't know if Roy Cohn suffered from the level of AIDS dementia implied in this movie. I don't think anyone who can know would say. I know that, to the day he died, Roy Cohn claimed to have liver cancer even as he pulled strings to get AZT. I know that he was disbarred on his deathbed--and that he thoroughly deserved it. (He was disbarred for misappropriation of clients' funds, lying on a bar application, and pressuring a client--who was on his own deathbed at the time--to change his will.)
James Woods is a very talented man, excelling in playing horrible, horrible men. He often plays real-life men, usually killers or other unsavoury types. (More on this when we finally get to [i]Ghosts of Mississippi[/i], I should think.) He knows, obviously, that he has a gift for playing these types, and he can even, sometimes, make them likable, when that's what's called for. There are glimmers of this in his Roy Cohn. You even have some sympathy for him as he lies, dying and mad, in a New York hospital.
Roy Cohn was a horrible, horrible man, and this is a fascinating portrayal of him. I'm also delighted by the casting of Joe Don Baker as Joseph McCarthy. Still, he's not as over the top as the guy who played McCarthy in [i]Good Night and Good Luck[/i].