Review of Spotlight (2015) by Richard D — 04 Aug 2016

I had avoided this film up until now because I don't tend to like "issue" films a whole lot. There are great ones, but many of them are fairly bland and uncinematic. I shouldn't have.

This is a quietly great one. "All the President's Men" is a good point of comparison. Both are low key films that focus on the details of an investigation and feature outstanding acting by an ensemble cast.

Tom McCarthy has directed a handful of brilliant, low-key indie films (let's just pretend "The Cobbler" never happened), and he brings that approach to this genre. It doesn't sensationalize the issue, but the scope of the scandal gradually evolves and you start to really share the characters's outrage and amazement that something this big could have been going on in virtual secret for so many decades.