Not the movie it should have been...

J. Michael Pence

RKO 281 is based on the making of Orson Welles's masterpiece, Citizen Kane, but unlike the movie it portrays, RKO 281 lacks Welles's fiery signature of creativity. The movie itself is well-filmed, with elaborate backdrops and a captivating depth of the 30's period in which it was shot. However, the plot outside this remarkable backdrop, is sadly quite shallow.


Outside of the obvious battle between Welles (played by Liev Schrieber) and media magnate William Randolph Hearst (played by James Cromwell), we have no sense of any underlying motivation for the story. This is pretty sad considering the film they wished to portray was none other than one of the greatest films of alltime, setting many of the technical standards used today. Indeed, the viewer is given little more than a fleeting glimpse of Citizen Kane's production, and only a few of the most blindingly obvious innovations in the film (such as slanted camera angles). The disturbing part of these remarkably few revelations is that they come after 50 minutes of a historically unrelenting plot outlining everything from the land-lease law to Hollywood gossip rags of the 30's. I also found it odd that they never mentioned that Citizen Kane was booed at the 1941 Oscars, of which most he was snubbed.

The black-and-white confrontation of the movie is little more than grey-and-grey. Welles apparently doesn't want to make the movie because Kane represents the hollowness of greed, but because he feels that Hearst is a hypocrite. Hearst is not so much egnimatic and soulless as Kane, but more of a helpless withered shadow of a man. This attack of Hearst's character is never truly resolved, because the story never makes it clear that Citizen Kane was based on Hearst, but isn't about Hearst.

Sadly, there is one more note I wish to add. The actors in this movie seemed like 8th graders forced into a Shakespearian play, they either misunderstood the meaning of this picture, or failed to connect emotionally. As Shakespeare in Love taught us, even the Bard's works can be made interesting with the right mindset. This could have been a great movie, but fell far short.

score 5/10

J. Michael Pence 21 November 1999

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0467862/