Citizen Cohn (DVD, 2001)

I believe that in this film James Woods nails one of his best performances of a long career. He plays Roy Cohn, the self-promoting Commie Catcher on Senator Joe McCarthy's staff during the Red Scare of the early 1950s--the era which induced Arthur Miller to write "The Crucible". Woods portrays Cohn as ruthless, self-absorbed, manipulative and maniacally ambitious. However, Cohn is a monster with a very human side, a man beset with an almost overpowering self-loathing, which he recognizes but consistently rationalizes. For example, he describes himself at one point as a Jew that persecutes Jews, a gay that persecutes gays, and, though beset by guilt for both injustices, he nevertheless maintains that Roy Cohn can stand against the world.
The focal set in the film is the hospital room in which Cohn is dying of AIDS in 1986, but it flashes back through his childhood and adult career and adds the very interesting feature of his being visited in the hospital by people who have died before him, including Ethel Rosenberg, whose death he engineered, .
Strong supporting performances in the film are delivered by Josef Sommers (Cohn's father), Lee Grant (Cohn's mother), Ed Flanders (Joseph Welch), Pat Hingle (J. Edgar Hoover) and Joe Don Baker (Joe McCarthy).
The film is both entertaining and engaging. I found myself caught up in the well written drama and well portrayed characters as it is an excellent conveyance of a person's succumbing to his evil side which nevertheless addresses the human side as well. Another aspect, which is equally compelling, is how fear and paranoia can consume an entire country, if only temporarily.
I recommend this film to anyone who appreciates drama, studies of the darker side of the human being, and/or has an interest in American history.