Spotlight shines with great power

AUSTRALIA
The West Australian

Mark Naglazas
January 29, 2016

Spotlight (M)
4.5 stars
Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams
Director Tom McCarthy

Review Mark Naglazas

The newspaper picture is one of Hollywood’s richest sub-genres, yielding great comedies and satires (His Girl Friday, Broadcast News), sour dissections of the profession (Ace in the Hole, The Sweet Smell of Success) and several flat-out masterpieces (Citizen Kane, Network).

However, not even the greatest of all movies about newspapers, All the President’s Men, has been so devoted to capturing the unglamorous grind of investigative journalism as Spotlight, which tells the true story of the Boston’s Globe’s Pulitzer Prize-wining expose of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

Indeed, co-writer and director Tom McCarthy (The Visitor) was so intent on recreating the hard slog of putting together a great story – the hours wading through documents, the struggle to get witnesses to talk, the butting up against legal barriers – he risked boring the audience.

It was a risk worth taking as McCarthy and his remarkable ensemble cast have made the slow-drip gathering of facts as gripping as any jacked-up Hollywood thriller, reminding us that truth is always stranger and more compelling than fiction.

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