Last month, I had the opportunity to preview a rough cut of the feature film "Reagan." After watching the movie, I was asked to complete a questionnaire along with other members of the audience.

This week, the film was released nationally. I was interested in seeing the final cut. While I expected the credits and title sequences would be added and that the Foley editor would have touched up the sound effects, I was completely surprised to find the film added more scenes rather than deleting scenes. The final version was longer than the preview print.

The film did not dwell too much on Reagan's Hollywood acting career. In terms of film noir, Reagan did appear in "Storm Warning" and Don Siegel's remake of "The Killers." But what is of most interest were his actions as a union activist.

What interested me the most was how differently this production treated the Blacklist Era as compared to other films. A few years ago, I was mildly disappointed with the comic book quality of "Trumbo." So many films have addressed the Blacklist with respect to screenwriters and purported propaganda, but "Reagan" differs in that its focus emphasized the efforts of the Communists to take over the industry by seizing control of the trade unions generally and the Screen Actors Guild specifically.

While Reagan's military service rarely took him further than Culver City where he made instructional training films, his career prospects dimmed while he was in uniform. The initial promise that he showed before the war failed to materialize in the postwar era when he returned full-time to Warner Brothers after a long hiatus.

As his first marriage and career were spiraling downwards, Reagan had much more time for his union activities. One of his accomplishments was securing a health care benefit plan for actors.

The movie is unapologetic in depicting Soviet efforts to insert its agents into the major studios. An actor portraying Sterling Hayden testified before Congress that Reagan was the one who checked the planned takeover of the Screen Actors Guild. The SAG vote against merging all of the unions into a single labor group was important since it was the largest and most influential union and most of the smaller unions were presumably ready to follow its lead.

"Reagan" is a lengthy film without an intermission. Its running time is two and a half hours. Even the credits are filled with additional documentary footage and captions accompanying photographs of the Reagan family.