Review – Spotlight
All the President’s Men (1976) is a landmark in film history. It is a well-acted, perfectly paced, cinematic masterpiece about journalism and un-checked power. It showed how important it was to get a story out there even when the most powerful people in the world are trying to stop it. It also focused on a socially relevant issue that was still fresh in the minds of the American people.
Everything I said about All the President’s Men can be said about Spotlight, one of the most important and best movies of 2015.
Based on a true story, Spotlight focuses on a team of journalists at The Boston Globe called Spotlight in the early 2000’s and how they uncovered a giant scandal of child molestation and cover-ups within the Catholic Church that shook all of Boston and the Catholic community.
The all-star cast, featuring Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Billy Crudup, and Stanley Tucci, rivals Straight Outta Compton and Steve Jobs as the best ensemble of the year. Everybody is on top of their game and deserves awards recognition at the end of the year. Keaton follows up his career resurrecting performance in Birdman (2014) with yet another gem. Playing the editor of the Globe’s Spotlight team, Keaton conveys a man who is emotionally involved in the events happening, yet has to keep his composure and professionalism around the team in order to get the story done. He is poise and in control, but he will always back his team and get dirty when he needs to. It reminded me a lot of Jason Robard’s Oscar winning performance as Ben Bradley in All the President’s Men. Mark Ruffalo is incredible as Mike Rezendes. Rezendes starts off the investigation blind and comes out the most emotional person on the team. We watch him as he interviews victims and becomes more and more invested in the scandal, becoming angrier and more obsessed with breaking the story free. Ruffalo is ticking time-bomb ready to blow and when he does, it is something to behold. It is one of those Oscar-y scenes that could get him a nomination and win just for that one scene. He also physically becomes Rezendes, a twitching, child-esque mess. Some scenes I would look at the screen and think, “I know that’s Mark Ruffalo, but it isn’t.” It is one of the best performances from one of the most underrated actors in Hollywood. Rachel McAdams does some career best work as the tough, yet empathetic reporter Sacha Pfieffer. And Stanley Tucci is wildly compelling as the one lawyer in all of Boston willing to fight the church.
Writer/Director Tom McCarthy has made a perfect procedural with classic filmmaking. He builds the tension and shows us the dirty work these reporters did. He doesn’t shy away from the graphic nature of the crimes committed and really takes us into the investigation. Nothing is flashy or glamorous about Spotlight, and that’s the point, because neither is the story or the job the Spotlight team is investigating.
What McCarthy and co-writer Josh Singer do best is not make this movie about the reporters. Spotlight is about these heinous crimes and the people responsible for doing them and covering them up. The team is there to take us through what their investigation, but we feel what they feel through out the entire movie. As the number of molestations get higher and higher, the knot in your stomach tightens, and it becomes more appalling and tragic. Much like Woodward and Bernstein in All the President’s Men, the Spotlight team don’t want to be recognized for what they’ve done because they haven’t stopped the crimes at hand. Sometimes, there are no heroes in a movie.
It is close to the end of 2015, which means it is around that time to start making Best of the Year lists. Even with plenty of movies still to come, like Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s The Revenant, Ryan Coogler’s Creed, and J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars: The Force Awakens, I can guarantee that Spotlight will be near the very top of the list, as it is as close to a perfect movie as I’ve seen in 2015.
MY RATING – 4/4
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