I don't have too much to say about Spotlight, except that it's brilliant and you should go and see it immediately. It's based on the true story of journalists from The Boston Globe uncovering a widespread scandal involving the systematic abuse of children by Catholic priests, one that goes - you guessed it - right to the very top. But it doesn't have the usual "based on a true story" trappings that most films of its type endure. There are no false theatrics, no contrived backstories and melodrama inserted to spice up the action - instead, it's a brisk, heart-thumping, palm-sweating thriller, in the truest sense, that earns its stripes by respecting the intelligence of its audience. The stories of the victims aren't explicitly shown, because we don't need anything to remind us that CHILD ABUSE is BAD - to insinuate otherwise would be insulting. Instead, we're more interested in the journalists themselves, flawed, human, and expertly portrayed, whose growing horror as the facts mount mirrors our own.
A few have made comparisons to All the President's Men, but it's closer in tone and look to the procedural action of The Wire. (Probably not a coincidence - the film's director, Tom McCarthy, played a scummy reporter in Season 5 of the show.) Above all, honesty is paramount. There's one big moment where Mark Ruffalo - the closest the film has to a showy performance - delivers a very angry speech about the paper's failure to publish quickly enough that, in any other film, would be treated as a soapbox moment. "They knew, and they let it happen! It could have you, it could have been me, it could have been any of us!" he screams. His editor, played by the always wonderful Michael Keaton, waits for him to finish. Then he tells him to calm down and be reasonable, that publishing now would compromise the investigation. Ruffalo reluctantly agrees. They get back to work.
★★★★½
