About the only thing keeping Trumbo from scoring full points on the Bingo card of Oscar season subject matter is that Bryan Cranston’s brilliant-but-tragic historical figure from Hollywood’s Golden Age isn’t the character in it who contracts lung cancer. Portraying life with a fatal disease is old pork pie hat to Cranston, so it’d be cheating history, and his fellow nominees, to give him that particular hallmark of a Serious Work. Yet, what surprises most about Trumbo during its march to a familiar prestige biopic tune is its reined in pretensions.

It’s not just the rich cast and juicy insider perspective that make talking about Trumbo in terms of its awards potential so tempting. The film itself is about one man’s decades-long fight for recognition within Hollywood, both as a writer, and a free man. The post-war America that saw Dalton Trumbo become Hollywood...