Where’s My Roy Cohn?                                 4 stars

The documentary Where’s My Roy Cohn? was on my list to see at Sundance, but I didn’t get the chance to see it then.  Thankfully I found it on cable so just saw it during this time of quarantine.  This film by Matt Tyrnauer tells us about one of the most notorious (and ugliest) figures in the latter twentieth century of American politics.  It covers his career starting with his participating as a prosecutor in the trial of the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg resulting in their execution, extending to the Communist hearings with Joseph McCarthy and his connections with New York mobsters as a defense attorney often getting light sentences for them.  The film features many interviews with his various associates and relatives (including Roger Stone), none of whom have a kind thing to say about his character.  However, the point is made that he was a sharp lawyer who was always ready for a fight and would stop at nothing to destroy his enemies.  Through the seventies and eighties Cohn had close contacts with the administrations of Nixon and Reagan playing a role in some of the harshest right wing policies that continue to this day.  The film also goes into Cohn’s gay lifestyle, how it was no real secret that he associated with gay men and frequented gay night clubs.  Yet he always maintained that he was not gay up to his death from AIDs in 1986.  Included is Cohn’s role as mentor to a young New York real estate tycoon named Donald J. Trump.  According to the film Trump learned to never admit being wrong and to never make apologies.  Cohn successfully defended the Trumps in an anti-discrimination lawsuit involving denying housing to African Americans.  Trump even used Cohn’s mob ties to get his Trump Tower built in New York City in the early eighties.  Given how this man is portrayed, one would probably not describe the film as impartial.  It shows how he made a career of using lies and deceit to destroy lives for sake of personal gain throughout his career and how he had no empathy toward fellow humans.  Whether or not you are familiar with Roy Cohn’s career, I recommend you see this movie.