This movie pulls no punches when it scorches the republican party. Not only does it portray the republican generated red scare & blacklist hysteria, it literally names "republicans" (and Russia & N Korea) as the villains in this film. Regardless of the audience's ideology, it works great on a storytelling level because it clearly outlines the villain and gives real-world context to make the story relevant.

As I was watching this, it occurred to me that today's mainstream movies don't dare do that anymore. Recently we've had films like Civil War and Top Gun Maverick which very conspicuously tiptoe around political identities. This has raised eyebrows, if not annoyed audiences and critics alike.

I wasn't alive in the 50s-60s so I wouldn't know, but my guess is despite political divisions amongst audiences, back then people were less volatile about getting their political toes stepped on. Whether it was a right wing propaganda film of the WW2 era or a left wing hippie flick of the 60s-70s, or back to right wing 80s Reagan era action flicks, movies asserted political identities as a basis of good storytelling. They name the enemy, loud & proud. And sure feathers were ruffled, but people dealt with it and good movies were made.

These days films do portray strong political caricatures but they always dance around the words "republican" and "democrat" as if that's a red line Hollywood is afraid to cross today. The resulting stories are detached from the real world; instead we get a fantasy 'evil organization' that we shan't name. No real world relevance, any more than an Austin Powers spoof. Obviously it's to avoid alienating half their ticket sales. But artistically, are filmmakers shooting themselves in the foot by playing it safe?