Boston Globe
journalists re-open an
investigation into the abuse of children by local priests in Tom
McCarthy’s compelling study of shame and cover-up.
In the highly Catholic city of
Tom McCarthy’s film, based on actual events and co-written by him and Josh Singer, looks at the evidence in a sober, clear-sighted way, slowly opening those hitherto closed doors to reveal the involvement of over eighty priests in Boston alone, many hundreds elsewhere in the US and thousands on a global level. New editor at the Globe, Marty Baron, impresses his staff to go after the system rather than the individuals who committed the abuse. Trying to get to the truth before any other paper handles the story, the Spotlight team go all out to reveal the guilty parties but without alienating the victims. A scene where a boy, now a grown man, reveals his story is movingly handled by reporter Sacha Pfeiffer, although there is a hint of prurience in her interview as she tries to get him to reveal all the grisly details of the abuse.
Paper trail: Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo and Brian d'Arcy James
McCarthy
has gathered a fine cast of players including Liev Schreiber, quietly
effective as the tentative new editor, Michael Keaton in a well
measured performance as Robby Robinson, head of the Spotlight team
desperate to get a result but scared of wrongfooting the whole
investigation, and Rachel McAdams as Pfeiffer who exerts magnificent
control over her feelings for the sufferers she encounters. John
Slattery gives a gung-ho performance as the irritable section head Ben
Bradlee Jr, son of the famous Watergate investigator, while Mark
Ruffalo is the heroic chief reporter Michael Rezendes, always impatient
to nail the priests involved but who has to be persuaded to take a
softly-softly approach. Stanley Tucci gives an endearingly tetchy
performance as Mitch Garabedian, a lawyer weighed down by his workload,
who suspects everybody’s motives.
MICHAEL DARVELL
Cast:
Mark
Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery,
Stanley Tucci, Brian d'Arcy James, Billy Crudup, Jamey
Sheridan,
Richard Jenkins, Paul Guilfoyle, Len Cariou.
Dir Tom McCarthy, Pro Michael Sugar,
Nicole Rocklin, Steve Golin, Blye Pagan Faust, Screenplay Tom
McCarthy and Josh Singer, Ph
Masanobu Takayanagi, Pro
Des Stephen H Carter, Ed
Tom McArdle, Music
Howard Shore, Costumes
Wendy Chuck.
First Look/Anonymous
Content/Participant Media/Rocklin-Faust-Entertainment One.
128 mins. USA. 2015. Rel: 29 January 2016. Cert. 15.