Spotlight 2015

A

There was a lot of hype from critics on this movie and I had been wanting to see it, but it didn’t come to the local theater until after the Oscar nominations were announced and people identified it as a leading contender. As it started I hoped that I wouldn’t be disappointed for it not living up to my very high expectations, but Spotlight holds up just fine. It’s not an action movie, not a thriller, the reporters aren’t threatened as they get closer to the big story, it is just a story of how some dedicated reporters were able to flesh out a sketchy story about a priest who abused children with more and more information until they had the biggest story of their lives.

The after credits say they wound up writing 600 articles on the subject matter, but the movie leads up to the first big story that would appear in the Sunday Boston Globe in 2002. The movie follows the four reporters of the Globe’s Spotlight investigative team from when the seed for the story is first planted by their new editor. There is nothing particularly flashy here. Everyone seems pretty realistic, but it doesn’t feel like a documentary. It is just the story of these people at work on something more important than anyone realizes, even though it has been right in front of them for years.

We hear from some of the victims and details of what happened and how, but the story is more about the investigation and the way the church in Boston kept things quiet, not without a lot of help from all kinds of people. It is very well done, similar to classic investigation movies like A Few Good Men or All the President’s Men. All of the performances are very solid, usually understated, from a cast of some of my favorite actors. Mark Ruffalo is very good, though his performance was a litle too caricatured at times, no doubt based on the real life person he was playing, but we know Mark Ruffalo, so it’s disconcerting for him to be different. Still, as the main investigator, he is hard not to like. Really just the whole cast is good and a joy to watch. Even Richard Jenkins who only appears as a voice on the phone is good. The movie also avoids being preachy, but it still makes all of its points. This is a film that is satisfying on a lot of different levels, so I have to give it an A.

Update: After procrastinating for over a year waiting for the price to come down and then fearing the Blu-ray would disappear completely, I went ahead and bought it. Watching the movie again, it was just as good from start to finish. I was glad to see this movie win the Best Picture Oscar since it also topped my list for 2015. The Blu-ray has a round table with the real life members of the Spotlight investigation team as well as the editor and publisher of the Globe from that time, so it is good to hear from them, but other than that the extras on the Blu-ray are pretty thin and also repetitive as all three featured some of the exact same scenes from the movie. Also there is no commentary track whatsoever, when it seems like you could do several really good ones starting with the real journalists, then the actors, as well as the writers and director.

Written: 23 Jan 2016

Owned on: Blu-ray, DVD, Digital