There's something audacious about making an over-three-hour film lionizing American Communists and the Russian Revolution and releasing it in the same year Ronald Reagan comes to power, but Warren Beatty's epic balances romance, politics, and historical sweep in a way that recalls films like Lawrence of Arabia and Gone With the Wind, but without all the ambient racism. Written, directed, and starring Beatty as journalist and party leader John Reed, with Diane Keaton as his wife, the writer Louise Bryant, and Jack Nicholson as the playwrite Eugene O'Neill.