Reds is a fascinating film but it does not spell much confidence in the Russian Revolution. It records has soon revolutionary euphoria passed into dictatorship, even in the period of Lenin. The movie does not inspire confidence in the marxist left or the muddle they made of a great opportunity. Part of the problem was the lack of any real concept of democratic socialism, in the Leninist mistrust of liberal democracies, not surprising perhaps, but the hard duality of communism/liberalism proved fatal almost at once as the so-called communist mental vacuum became a theme of oligarchic control. Under the conditions at hand, and the attacks of the capitalist world and their fear of working-class action in the US leading to the FBI's birth, etc,...the retreat into a hard shell as with the Bolsheviks is not all that surprising, but the result was failure and the waste of a great opportunity...

Source: Forty Years Later, Reds Is Still One of the Best Films Ever Made About Revolutionary Politics – 1848+: The End(s) of History