Movie Review: Spotlight

The presumptive ‘Best Picture’ winner has a lot of hype behind it. And yet, the film itself is a quiet achiever; the kind that still delivers a devastating gut-punch.

The innate pleasure of watching people do their jobs well is one of the lesser appreciated delights of cinema and television.

Think of the friendly collaborators of The Martian; the inspiring stewardship of Coach Taylor in Friday Night Lights; and the unrelenting government worker Leslie Knope, great blonde hope of Parks and Recreation.

Add to that list the journalists of Spotlight, writer-director Tom McCarthy's uncomplicated yet detailed and hugely effective retelling of the journalistic process that unearthed decades of child abuse among Catholic priests in Boston.

The year is 2001. When the Boston Globe's incoming editor Marty Baron (an understated Liev Schrieber) wonders why the paper hasn't fully investigated the story of a local priest who reportedly abused several children, the long-form ‘Spotlight’ team is given the most unpopular task in the city: dig deep.

Led by longtime "player-coach" editor ‘Robby’ Robinson (Michael Keaton), newshounds played by Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams and Brian d’Arcy James pound the pavement, querying the Church and looking into quashed legal proceedings, before taking testimony from victims who were bullied into silence by their own community.

What initially seems like a few loose stories, spun by crackpots, reveals itself to be something like an epidemic. The journalists, facing legal opposition, rejection by the public and the scent of conspiracy, slowly plug away until they can safely, responsibly and sensationally bring the story to light. Throughout, McCarthy lets his movie simmer without ever boiling over. Devoid of distracting bells and whistles, some will call this unexceptional direction. Nothing more is needed. If Spotlight teaches us anything, it's that telling a story in the correct manner makes the most damaging dent.

Keaton is superb as the old-school writer who maybe sat on the story without realising. Ruffalo, similarly, excels as the hungry, unrelenting journo for whom anything short of exposing and destroying a criminal ring of the most heinous crime imaginable (through rigorous investigation, of course) would mean failure.

Around them, only pros: John Slattery as editor Ben Bradlee Jnr. (the real-life son of Ben Bradlee, painted memorably in this flick’s ancestor All the President's Men); Stanley Tucci as the irascible lawyer who understands too well that his clients, the victims, are fighting in a fixed game; and Billy Crudup as the whistleblowing lawyer who went ignored.

Like those they're depicting, they do discreet, professional work. Cumulatively, it results in something seismic. (Some have disputed McCarthy’s ‘Best Director’ Oscar nomination over other flashier, snubbed filmmakers. Remember: directors direct actors too. We shouldn’t always be looking for pizzazz.)

At times, the screenplay by McCarthy and Josh Singer (a West Wing graduate) attempts to spell out the significance of what their quiet heroes have archived with particularly movie-ish lines of dialogue. When you're underplaying everything else, it's easy to be afraid that the audience will miss the weight of what's transpired, or be disappointed that it didn't feel like a proper picture. They should have had more confidence in what they'd conjured.

From the normcore art decoration of the Boston Globe offices to the steady, unobtrusive camerawork by Masanobu Takayanagi, Spotlight gets the job done efficiently and without complaint.

It has also achieved a minor miracle with its casting, not just of its main ensemble, but for those unknown working actors who, just for a scene or two, portray the victims at the heart of the story. Spotlight belongs to them and those they represent.

One of the gravest betrayals in human history has been documented first by these journalists and now, for the sake of pop culture and a mainstream audience, by this film. The importance of storytelling, as a cause and a monument, has been dutifully accomplished twice now, by two teams with the title Spotlight.

4.5/5

In cinemas January 28. Rated M for mature themes and coarse language.