2hotFeature one of my absolute favorites!

TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Sharkflei Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

Ariella Broughton It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

krocheav The best to be said about this one is that it is shorter than most. RKO 281 sets itself up to be a semi-factual account of events leading up to the filming of Orson Well's "Citizen Kane". Like most HBO TV productions it's stylish to the point of being borderline overdone. Perhaps they needed to spend more time on script research than on sets and costumes. The presence of some production involvement by WGBH gave hope of more historical accuracy's but this didn't seem to help (not a good move WGBH stay with your far better documentaries). Liev Schreiber while a fine performer, did not quite fit the Wells character (whereas Vincent D' Onofrio from the over-the-top 'Ed Wood' did an uncanny job of convincing us Well's was still among us). It's difficult I know to cast performers in roles of well known personalities but fact is, so few of the performers here seemed suited to their character identities and this had the effect of hurting the final outcome.With a screenplay that contains so many intimate details - most have to represent massive amounts of supposition - to the point it probably misrepresented far too many of the 'facts'. The intentions the writers and producers wanted to convey seem unclear - or were they just having campy fun at the audiences expense?. Perhaps the one thing they did get across was that Mr Wells may have been equally as hypercritical as the man he wanted to expose (maybe even more so?). Hurst (James Cromwell) on the other hand, as written and played, comes across more as the wronged victim - even as a rather sympathetic character. So who's right? perhaps none. Melanie Griffiths as Marian Davies, by most accounts, is also somewhat doubtful. Don't come to this one looking for facts, they're simply not there. Even the final accolades indicated at the end of this movie - during the premiere screening of 'Citizen Kane' don't gel - it was largely ignored. Perhaps this was partly due to limited promotion or could it have been ahead of it's time?. It's not easy to tell because the 1930's- 1940'S saw many great movies come and go, so audiences of the day did have a very good idea of what constituted a great film.At least, this production offers some good insights to the movie business - including some of the more sinister expose's of otherwise 'respectable' high profile personalities - but, like several others of its genre (before and after) it could have been better.

blanche-2 Intended as a feature film with an entirely different cast, RKO 281 is an HBo movie purporting to telling the story of Orson Welles making Citizen Kane.Obviously because it's a film in a limited time frame, many events had to be simplified and scenes made up. I won't go through everything that is incorrect. Suffice to say the film depended on a lot of urban legend and rumors rather than real facts.Citizen Kane was supposedly the story of the newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst. Welles (Liev Schreiber) vehemently denied this at the time. No one knows what was in his mind because he had absolutely no choice but to deny it, whether or not it was true. Hearst, here played by James Cromwell, wants the film suppressed. By having Louella Parsons make inflammatory comments about the moguls in his paper, they were soon ready to buy the film from RKO and destroy it. Free speech won, but Hearst refused to have any of his papers publicize Kane, advertise it, or review it.What hurt Hearst most of all was that the role of Susan Alexander, supposedly based on Marion Davies (Melanie Griffith), was an alcoholic. He told someone (this wasn't in this movie) that what crushed him was "the drinking." The film did hurt the image of Marion Davies - for years many believed she was a no-talent drunk whose career was totally because she was the mistress of a powerful man.In truth, something else not mentioned in this movie, is that there were two moguls who had done something similar as Kane did in the film. Samuel Insull built the Chicago Opera House, and a tycoon named Harold Fowler McCormick promoted the opera career of his second wife. This suggests that Kane was, in fact, a combination of men. Marion Davies was a talented comedienne. She truly loved Hearst and when he hit bottom, she was there with financial and emotional support. And rather than help her career, he hurt it due to the types of roles he wanted her to play, and she retired from films in 1937.As far as the background squabbles, these were complicated. The actors, Richard Dreyfuss as George Schaefer, John Malkovich as Herman Mankiewicz, David Suchet as Louis B. Mayer, Liam Cunningham as Gregg Toland, were all marvelous.Melanie Griffith I feel was miscast, coming off like a bimbo, which I don't think Davies was; and how anyone could cast Anastasia Hille as Carole Lombard is beyond me. Wrong.And Rosebud? It seems odd, but not impossible, I suppose, that someone knew Hearst's pet name for part of Davies' anatomy. But since the early story of Kane is actually closer to the story of Herman Mankiewicz's childhood, and since Welles denied that the film was about Kane, why put something so obvious in the film? No one will ever know, but needless to say, that story spread like wildfire.Liev Schreiber is excellent as Welles - no one was cast to look like the characters they played -- but I question the characterization of Welles in the script as a man afraid of being exposed as a fraud and not a boy wonder. He was coming off of huge success in New York and great notoriety with War of the Worlds. He was 25 years old. Twenty-five year-olds are invincible, immortal - the world hasn't had its way with them yet. Welles was a supremely confident young man and probably arrogant to boot, sleeping with the gorgeous Delores del Rio and having carte blanche at RKO. I don't buy any insecurity.Nevertheless, I found this movie very entertaining and extremely well acted, and it gives some insight about how the powerful Hearst attempted to manipulate his world via the press.

insomnia Orson Welles was just twenty-six years of age when he made "Citizen Kane." A film regarded by many to be one of the best films ever made. As Welles quipped: "I started at the top and worked down." There is no doubt that Orson Welles was a genius (child prodigy), and that he never made a better film than "Citizen Kane." "RKO 281" (the original production number given to "Kane" by the studio), is the story of the trials and tribulations of making "Citizen Kane." By rights, a film about the making of "Citizen Kane", should pack more of a wallop than this one does. The subject has all the ingredients of high melodrama that's for sure; only this film doesn't quite live up to it. This is not necessarily the fault of the director: it's just that the topic is a far too complex one to be portrayed in a mere eighty three minutes. Still and all, "RKO 281" is not a bad little film about how one of the true geniuses of the cinema, who was treated so abysmally by the system that allowed him to make the film in the first place. Under pressure from William Randolph Hearst (whom "Kane" is a thinly disguised version), the heads of the other major studios devised a plan to ensure the film would never ever be seen again. Thankfully, George Schaeffer at RKO didn't go along with this idea. The film had its premier, but failed to engage cinema audiences, and effectively sank without a trace, no doubt helped by a total ban on advertising by the Hearst organization. Praise should go to Liev Schreiber as Welles, Roy Scheider as RKO boss, George Schaeffer, John Malcovich as Herman Mankiewicz, John Cromwell as Hearst and Melanie Griffith as Marion Davies. A special mention should also go to Brenda Blethyn as Hearst columnist Louella Parsons. In addition, Orson Welles second feature, "The Magnificent Ambersons", suffered the ignominy of having the editing of the film taken away from by RKO, who not only removed an hour of footage, but also shot a new, happier ending and tacked it onto the film. Although the extensive notes left by Welles on how the film was to be cut have survived, the excised scenes have not.

Robert J. Maxwell I'm absolutely sure that this film would be of more interest to film buffs and Welles fans than to the average viewer, although the buffs and fans might find it infuriating at times. The search for purity and perfection is bound to end in failure because, after all, who is pure? And what is perfect? The buffs and fans will probably gnash their teeth over historical inaccuracies and events and conversations that obviously must have been invented. They can join William Randolph Hearst and Orson Welles, because Hearst discovered that he didn't exercise pure power and Welles found out that his career was destined to be less than perfect. But the buffs and fans can still rejoice in knowing that they understand a little more than the rest of us about what the hell was going on in Hollywood and the rest of the world in 1940 and 1941.Taken as just another movie, without reference to historical events, "RKO 281" isn't bad. It's not the best made-for TV movie that HBO has come up with, but it's interesting to get a glimpse into the contrast -- and the similarities -- between Welles, a self-proclaimed genius and novice film maker, and Hearst, the old fuddy duddy who lived with his younger mistress in a castle on a hill on an estate half the size of Rhode Island. One was rich with the ideas and daring of youth. The other was rich, period.Good performances all around, as far as the principles go. Maybe Melanie Griffith isn't the vivacious and mischievous hostess that Marian Davies was said to have been, but she gets the job done. Liev Schreiber is a passable Welles, though not as handsome to the heterosexual eye as was the 25-year-old prodigy himself. John Cromwell probably gives the best performance as Hearst, the man who owned too much. It's a complex character role, not easy to play. Hearst isn't the kind of guy you'd like to have a beer with, but Cromwell manages to make him rather sympathetic at times. John Malkovich is Herman Mankowitz, co-writer of "Citizen Kane," and he's reliable, as always. Too bad they left out the incident at which Mankowitz, drunk, vomited at the dinner table and apologized by saying, "It's alright, Mister Hearst. The white wine came up with the fish." If there's a weak thread running through the story of this battle, it's the script. Sometimes it positively flows, as in Welles' speech to the RKO board in New York. At other times, it seems as if the writer had one eye on a textbook for Screen Writing 101. Why would an American, even a stuffy one, substitute the British "shall" for the red-white-and-blue "will"? Entire conversations sound stilted and aimed at immediate comprehension by the viewer, attempts to spare him the torture of thought.No, it's not a TV masterpiece, but it's a good job of commercial film making, the kind that HBO can sometimes be very good at. I think most people would find it engaging enough to hold their attention. Especially, as I say, the buffs and fans. I'm not sure about those who might have to stretch in order to grasp the concept of "Hitler" -- never mind "RKO 281".