X
- 2019
- PG-13
- Sony Pictures Classics
- 1 h 37 m
- 2019
- PG-13
- Sony Pictures Classics
- 1 h 37 m
Summary One of the most controversial and influential American men of the 20th Century, Roy Cohn was a ruthless and unscrupulous lawyer and political power broker whose 28-year career ranged from acting as chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy's Communist-hunting subcommittee to molding the career of a young Queens real estate developer named...
Directed By: Matt Tyrnauer
- 2019
- PG-13
- Sony Pictures Classics
- 1 h 37 m
- 2019
- PG-13
- Sony Pictures Classics
- 1 h 37 m
Where's My Roy Cohn?
70
6.3
Where to Watch
Summary One of the most controversial and influential American men of the 20th Century, Roy Cohn was a ruthless and unscrupulous lawyer and political power broker whose 28-year career ranged from acting as chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy's Communist-hunting subcommittee to molding the career of a young Queens real estate developer named...
Directed By: Matt Tyrnauer
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 26 Critic Reviews
70
73% Positive
19 Reviews
19 Reviews
27% Mixed
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 26 Critic Reviews
70
73% Positive
19 Reviews
19 Reviews
27% Mixed
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
In the month since this documentary went into limited release, it’s proven prophetic about events as crimes are alleged or revealed in Washington. Where’s My Roy Cohn? even seems to predict how the tidal wave of high crimes and misdemeanors might play out.
Donald Trump was less kind, essentially abandoning him after his then still-secret diagnosis. Tyrnauer smartly doesn’t overplay the symbolism of their relationship, or work too hard to connect the dots; it’s all there to take or leave in the film’s shrewd, illuminating exploration of a man whose influence, for better or worse, may have far outdone even his wildest dreams.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 10 User Ratings
6.3
60% Positive
6 Ratings
6 Ratings
30% Mixed
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
10% Negative
1 Rating
1 Rating
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 10 User Ratings
6.3
60% Positive
6 Ratings
6 Ratings
30% Mixed
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
10% Negative
1 Rating
1 Rating
Matt Tyrnauer (Valentino: The Last Emperor, Studio 54, Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood, Citizen Jane: Battle for the City) opened his latest work, Where's my Roy Cohn? at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, Friday, January 25th, 2019. Where's my Roy Cohn? is a documentary and premiered in the Sundance U.S. Documentary Competition. Utilizing traditional documentary techniques of voice-over narration, direct interviews, archival footage, and photographic stills, Trynauer exposes Cohn’s malign influence and contextualizes him as a modern Machiavelli who influences our country today at the highest level.
Cohn first came into the public eye as an assistant to J. Edgar Hoover and handled the prosecution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a Jewish couple arrested, tried, convicted and executed for spying for Russia and securing Manhattan Project documents for the Russian government. Cohn, a twenty-three-year-old fast-rising attorney, claimed to have not only persuaded the presiding judge, Irving Kaufman, to impose the death penalty but also to have had Judge Irving assigned the case. Cohn's reward for the Rosenberg execution was an appointment as special counsel to the 1950s, US Senatorial demagogue, Joseph McCarthy.
Tyrnauer provides compelling evidence Cohn was responsible for much of McCarthy's demagoguery and rises to power. Soon, however, Cohn would cause his own and McCarthy's fall from grace. During the Army-McCarthy hearings, direct questioning revealed Cohn had a "special relationship" with G. David Schine and pressured the U.S. Army to give Schine preferential treatment. Cohn would resign after he was humiliated and pummeled with **** comments during the televised hearings. Cohn claimed everybody wanted him to stay on. According to those who worked with Cohn, this was not the case.
From here, Cohn would go onto be the personification of the dark arts of 20th-century American politics. Cohn became a mover and shaker of dubious means. He fluffed his persona despite inflicting financial losses on his clients and family. Trynauer shockingly unearths the origins of the seditious right wing’s ascent, revealing how Cohn, a deeply troubled master manipulator, has shaped our current political world. Cohn persistently defended himself by attacking his adversaries. Moreover, Cohn utilized the press to generate sensational public sympathy for his plight.
Cohn had refined his strategy well over the years as the primary press leaker during his McCarthy days gaining the friendship of the formidable press magnate, Walter Winchell, and a cadre of ambitious reporters. How Cohn had been able to pressure the judiciary was less clear. To me, his political clout emanated from his wide social circle of wealthy, influential friends. Cohn was known for throwing lavish parties and hobnobbed with almost every imaginable socialite of the day including then artist, Andy Warhol, and re-emerged as a New York power broker, mafia consigliere, white-collar criminal, and, eventually, the mentor of Donald J. Trump.
Following Cohn's lead, Trump began his flamboyant rise first on Cohn's shoulders and then his back. Eventually, Trump became the master of personal attacks, hyperbole, sensationalism, and utilizing the press to get out in front of the story. The similarities are uncanny and for me to say the likeness of these character trajectories are disturbing would be an understatement. One of the most powerful and politically revealing films of the festival.
Highly recommended!
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“Where’s My Roy Cohn” is a documentary covering the life of this flamboyant and obviously intelligent lawyer who, in his early 20’s became counsel for the infamous Joseph McCarthy and his Committee investigating allegedly un-American activities in government.
Directed by Matt Tynauer, it is also the story of a self hating Jew and an equally self hating **** man who attacked **** with the same vigor and vitality as he did in the pursuit of those same men to whom he was romantically attracted and sought. More than anything it is the study of evil and how it can harm innocent and principled entities and people and hopefully teaches us how to cope with it and, perhaps, even help us avoid its presence. I give the film an 8 for it not only entertains but informs as well.
Report
A biographical portrait that doubles as an origin story for today’s amoral political landscape, its marriage of incisiveness and timeliness should make it an indie hit this fall.
In his mind, Cohn was still the hero of his own story. And we get the impression from this film that, right up to the bitter, agonized end, he was engaged in an internal battle to justify himself to himself, and to the world.
Where’s My Roy Cohn?” is most interesting for the questions it doesn’t explicitly ask. Those have to do with not with Cohn’s blatant amorality, but with the moral compromises of the elite who tolerated his company and found uses for his talents.
Tyrnauer’s film doesn’t seem to trust its material enough to allow the power of the stories to unfold without a constant hammering of a B-level-journalism music soundtrack — the kind best-suited for tabloid news programs. And the film’s unwavering criticism of Cohn (however warranted it might be) reduces an otherwise gripping biographical story into a sensationalized television-ready expose.
To fully understand Cohn, to see how the larger-than-life force shaping the latter half of the 20th century came to mold the 21st as well, requires a more penetrating approach than Tyrnauer’s easily digested, skin-deep survey.
This hard-hitting documentary about McCarthy Era counsel Roy Cohn presents a rather damning portrait of its subject, one whose relentlessness, determination and drive served his dubious clients well but helped set the US down a path of unbridled greed and self-serving interests that have not only given free rein to the power elite. but have also changed the overall culture for the worse. The film features a wealth of archive footage -- so much so that it almost relies on it a little too much in telling its story -- but its team of analysts helps to balance that, offering colorful and telling commentary about a manipulative puppet master who has left quite a legacy -- and not one that anyone should be proud of.
Report
An absorbing and fascinating documentary about a political powerbroker who worked behind the scenes where he had much more influence than he ever would have had if he had actually run for elective office. This is very much a “New York story” and involves political figures like Donald Trump, Joseph McCarthy, and Richard Nixon among many others.
Report
Ironically, Roy Cohn was a mere child compared to today's Deep State and Corporate Media whose anti-Russia hysteria, paranoia, and conspiracy theories make Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn look sane and sound in comparison. Furthermore, while there were REAL COMMUNISTS in government back then -- the likes of Morton Sobell and the Rosenbergs sent Nuclear secrets to mass murderer Stalin -- , there has been ZERO evidence of Russia collusion with Trump. But the Power gets to do as it wishes, and the kind of snakes in Hollywood who made this movie seem to be lacking in self-awareness. Btw, Cohn had much in common with current Hollywood oligarchs. He was an arch Zionist who, like rest of Hollywood, supported the genocide of Palestinians.
Report
While its political positions about Cohn are indisputably on target, this biodoc from Matt Tyrnauer feels so scattershot and devoid of anything remotely resembling a narrative structure, you wonder if Tyrnauer's editing software accidentally scrambled the final cut. 'Where's My Roy' zigs and zags and leaps from one phase of Cohn's life to another in such a haphazard manner that it doesn't even have a basic historical chronology to fall back on. It's a mess.
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Production Company
Altimeter Films
Release Date Sep 20, 2019
Duration 1 h 37 m
Rating PG-13
Genres
Tagline If You Were In His Presence, You Knew You Were In The Presence of Evil.
Awards
Sundance Film Festival
• 1 Nomination
International Documentary Association
• 1 Nomination
St. Louis Film Critics Association, US
• 1 Nomination