John Reed was one of the foremost left-wing leaders during America’s early 20th-century Progressive Era and had much in common with today’s Democratic Socialists. AdvertisementJohn Silas “Jack” Reed was a Zohran Mamdani of his era. Indeed, Reed can be looked upon as a godfather of modern American radical socialism, whose views and fervent activism would be embraced by today’s DSA. As Mamdani once revealingly opined, such policies might even lead to “seizing the means of production,” a Marxist concept found in the Communist Manifesto and Capital that Jack Reed knew well. Beatty tells Reed’s political story around his loosely committed and rocky romance with his wife, feminist artist Louise Bryant, portrayed by the late Diane Keaton.