UNITED STATES
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
‘Spotlight’ 4 stars
Pittsburgh native Michael Keaton stars in the story of how the Boston Globe discovered a conspiracy to cover up clergy sexual abuse of children.
On his first day in 2001, editor Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) orders the staff to look at defrocked priest and accused sexual predator John J. Geoghan and what the archdiocese did or did not know and do about him.
The task falls to the four-person Spotlight team — editor Walter “Robby” Robinson (Mr. Keaton) and reporters Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams) and Matt Carroll (Brian d’Arcy James) — which normally picks its own projects.
Mr. Keaton plays a member of the Globe investigative team as though he had been working in newsrooms all his life and reminds us he can shine in an ensemble as well as a leading role.
“Spotlight,” which nails the details about how reporters dress, eat and work, treats this investigation as a suspenseful detective story. But it never loses sight of the young people harmed by pedophile priests, the church that figuratively and literally looms large throughout, and the mandate to keep pursuing the story when other editors might have been satisfied with far less much earlier.
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