Movie Review: 'Spotlight'
By Bill Wine
KYW Newsradio 1060
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Anyone already sad about what seems to be the imminent death of investigative print journalism will be further saddened in that regard by Spotlight.
This terrific journalistic drama shines a spotlight on Spotlight, the team that uncovered the massive child-molestation scandal and cover-up within the local Catholic Archdiocese in Boston and won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for the Boston Globe.
In doing so, it celebrates the power of the press and captures the mundane day-to-day toil, a form of quiet heroism, of newspaper reporters, practicing a form of journalism that is, as we speak, threatened with extinction.
In January of 2000, a team of investigative journalists working at the Globe published the beginning of an expose series about the sexual abuse of children by priests in the Catholic Church.
As a result of the initial publication of the story, hundreds of victims throughout the world were encouraged to come forward and speak out.
Director Tom McCarthy (The Station Agent, The Visitor, Win Win,The Cobbler), co-writer of the screenplay along with Josh Singer, uses the slow-build approach to take viewers through the process so as to understand both how these workaday journalists accomplished what they were attempting to do and why it took them so long to do it.
McCarthy's understated dramatic approach, his avoidance of sensationalism and – instead -- concentration on the ho-hum grunt work being done in the journalistic trenches in the name of breaking through levels of power and authority, allows the ultimate good-versus-evil thrust of the story to register with even more unforced impact.
The primary cast includes Michael Keaton as editor Robby Robinson, John Slattery as deputy managing editor Ben Bradlee Jr., Mark Ruffalo as reporter Michael Rezendes, Rachel McAdams as reporter Sasha Pfeiffer, Brian d'Arcy James as reporter Matt Carroll, and Liev Schreiber as new editor Marty Baron.
Like the actual journalists being portrayed, the cast comprises a true ensemble: there are no star turns here, nor should there be.
What the Spotlight scribes uncovered in what is also a detective drama of sorts that builds momentum as it seeks proof that pedophilia was a rampant problem among the clergy and that the code-of-silence cover-up of this epidemic of abuse reached as high as the archbishops.
To mention that the film that this one puts one in mind of is All the President's Men, whether or not Spotlight reaches quite that level of accomplishment, is among the highest of compliments for a film that never strikes a false note and surely deserves to be in the mix at Oscar time.
So we'll report on 3½ stars out of 4. for the gripping journalistic procedural drama, Spotlight, the well-told story of a story that needs to be told.
