Not all of Johnny Got His Gun succeeds in translation from novel to film. Some of the problems could be attributed to Trumbo obviously working with a limited budget. The dream sequences are very stagey, and some of the exterior scenes look like low budget Fellini. While some of the name actors appeared in this film as a way of supporting Trumbo and his vision, it is still disconcerting to see Donald Sutherland as a blue eyed, blond hippie Jesus. Jason Robards is better as Joe's father, the person who explains the relationship of war and democracy to his young son in flashback. The film was also the debut of Timothy Bottoms, released just two months before his more widely seen turn in The Last Picture Show.

That Johnny Got His Gun was made into a film seems almost inconceivable today. Trumbo's novel, published in 1939, questioned whether the goals of the first world war had been achieved in view of the number of dead and wounded soldiers following the armistice. The novel was republished in 1970 when the United States was involved in Viet Nam. Trumbo, a blacklisted screen writer in the Fifties, had by the end of the Sixties re-established his career more successfully than any of the other Hollywood Ten. Perhaps it was more commercially viable in the early Seventies, but it is difficult to imagine a film expressing clear anti-war sentiments made by Hollywood today.

One could almost imagine Trumbo being blacklisted again for this statement made in 1940:
"If they say to us, 'We must fight this war to preserve democracy,' let us say to them, 'There is no such thing as democracy in time of war. It is a lie, a deliberate deception to lead us to our own destruction. We will not die in order that our children may inherit a permanent military dictatorship.'"