Review of Bombshell (2019) by Davrosdaleks1 — 03 Jan 2020

Bombshell is about how the revelation that Fox News CEO Roger Ailes and other members of the network came out as sexual harassers due to female employees who finally spoke out.

This was a really well directed work. Given that this is about a pretty unpleasant subject matter, director Jay Roach (who started off in comedy with such films as Austin Powers and Meet the Parents) made perhaps the wise decision to try not to go too dark. There is a more of a focus on the female leads efforts within and against Fox News, trying not to define the women merely with what was done to them, and a darkly humorous look at a the company culture. A lot of exposition in the first third is is presented in a pretty audience-friendly manner.

Understand that when I say that things don't get too depressing that that doesn't mean the harassment is sugarcoated. The scenes that address this are emotionally striking with how awful the whole thing is. The movie is also pretty nuanced and three-dimensional in depicting the people involved and the situations.

My one issue is that a little too much specific factoids are spoken directly to the audience. However given that a movie criticizing conservative Fox News is a politically taut situation, I can see why the filmmakers want to demonstrate that they weren't being sloppy with their presentation of the events.

The cast is all around great. You'll probably be surprised by some of the faces that pop up here. Charlize Theron and Nicole Kidman are great in this. John Lithgow delivers one of the best roles of his career as Roger Ailes, managing to portray a loathsome creep while also making it seem natural how he manages to command loyalty among his employees and allies.

This is a well done film and I recommend this.