Movie Review: Spotlight

Drama

Rated - M

Duration - 2 hours 8 mins

Release - Feb 2016

Director - Tom McCarthy

Cast - Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Michael Keaton, Live Schreiber

Mr KNIGHT

This is a movie that I heard was nominated for awards… but that was all I had heard. After a little bit of intrigue from the Oscar buzz I looked a little deeper. I was happy to find a stack of first class actors featuring in Spotlight. Ruffalo, McAdams, Keaton, Schreiber to name some biggies, along with some other familiar faces like John Slattery the silver fox from Mad Men, the Devil Wear’s Prada’s Stanley Tucci and Watchmen’s bright blue Doctor Manhattan, Billy Crudup.

Spotlight follows a small investigative team (named after the films title) of the Boston Globe, a popular newspaper, who write exposés on local scandals. The team is run by Michael Keaton’s Robby and it is business as usual until the globe hires new editor from Time Magazine, Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber). Baron tasks the Spotlight team to delve into a suspected scandal in the Catholic Church and the possible abuse of children by the priesthood.

Based on true events set in the early 2000’s, this film really raises the veil on the corruption and misdeeds of the Catholic Church back from the 70’s all the way through to when the movie was set in just the Boston area alone. The Spotlight teams’ investigators headed by Mark Ruffalo’s persistent, bulldog-like Mike Rezendes chases the story through a small time lawyer gutsy enough to take on the Church, Mitchell Garabedian (Stanley Tucci). Rachel McAdams Sasha Pfeiffer in the meantime finds the victims and discovers their stories.

I found the entire cast gave brilliant performances. Ruffalo was passionate and wore his heart on his sleeve. Schreiber was focused and driven. Keaton was contemplative and refused to make the same mistakes of the past. I enjoyed how each actor did their bit without trying to steal the show and that made the story flow and feel more genuine.

Besides the performances, the actual content of this movie gave me an uncomfortable feeling as the scandal and cover-ups grew and grew. My advice for viewers is prepare yourself for a great movie, with an upsetting theme. As one chalkie unknown to me said on the way out of the cinema, “That was a powerful movie.”

 

Mrs KNIGHT

For those of you who don’t know, Spotlight won Best Picture at the Oscars this year. I feel like I’m throwing around a lot of 4 Star ratings these days, however, I agree this Award is well deserved.

The film is based on the true story of how the Boston Globe uncovered the scandal of child molestation and cover-up within the local Catholic Archdiocese. This story comes into view upon the appointment of a new editor, Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber). Once he joins the team, he mentions to the team of Boston Globe’s ‘Spotlight’ investigative team that he thinks there is more to this case than what has previously been revealed.

Once the team, led by Michael Keaton’s character Walter ‘Robby’ Robinson, begin to investigate more and more secrets are revealed. The reporters working on the story are played by a strong cast including Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo and Brian d’Arcy James.

The movie kept me engaged as it reveals different sides of the story, while profiling a couple of different victims and their experiences. I liked that the whole film focused on them uncovering the investigation and the feelings this evoked within the reporters rather than their personal lives. Each character equally contributed to the investigation. There was no one stand out performance from the actors, the entire ensemble performed strong as a whole.

How the scandal is uncovered is very well written. Overall, it was interesting, engaging and at times shocking. It made the audience feel uncomfortable with communal sighs and groans as more was revealed. There is not much lightness or anything uplifting about it, however this wouldn’t have been appropriate given the subject matter and content. This is a good one, I highly recommend it for all.