Movie Review

Roy Cohn was an anticommunist and homosexual, a politically brilliant, ruthlessly ambitious, and supremely confident lawyer. These attributes, this film argues, became embedded in his character early in his life and persisted throughout his tumultuous career, contributing to his successes and leading to his destruction. His father, a prominent New York politician and judge, provided him a "front row seat at big city politics" where he learned the value of the "marker"—debt owed for political favors. The son failed, however, to inherit his father's ethics, learning instead to use markers to manipulate people for his own ends. His indulgent mother convinced him that there was nothing he could not achieve. In his early teens, Cohn realized that he was homosexual, his "darkest secret" that he concealed and was never able to come to grips with.	1
This documentary offers little analysis of the roots of Cohn's anticommunism. It cites historian Richard Gid Powers's assertion that Cohn was disgusted by the frequency of Communist party affiliations among American Jews, but he then proceeds to assume that anticommunism for Cohn was primarily another vehicle to get ahead. As a young federal attorney prosecuting Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, he used every means, legal and otherwise, to win a conviction, both because he believed the Rosenbergs guilty and because a conviction would enhance his reputation. Later, in his memoirs, he boldly admitted his collusion with Judge Irving Kaufman during the trial.	2
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