I am just going to lay this out here, I am not a fan of Tom McCarthy's last film. The actor/writer/director's last work was the horrible Adam Sandler racist piece of crap entitled The Cobbler. After seeing the trailer for Spotlight however, I had no qualms about doctoring my popcorn just right and heading into the theater. I am not Catholic but I have known people who were and who hasn't heard of the scandal of the Catholic church and their priests and the child molestation accusations? Spotlight chose to discuss that madness in a way never approached in a film before. This film shines a spotlight (see what I did there?) on a team of reporters from the Boston Globe who investigated the Catholic priests and the abuse allegations in the predominantly Catholic population. They unearthed such rampant cases of abuse that while they initially buried the news when it came to light years before, it was just too much to keep hidden a second time around. Spotlight is a taught drama that highlights the overwhelming disbelief that this kind of sexual abuse was happening in parishes all over the city of Boston and the state of Massachusetts. It was like the reporters themselves had a hard time wrapping their brains around it.
Those Spotlight reporters were Mark Ruffalo, who was incredible as Mike Rezendes, Michael Keaton as Walter Robinson, Rachel McAdams as Sacha Pfeiffer, and Brian d'Arcy James as Matt Carroll. Alongside them was Liev Schreiber as Marty Baron, John Slattery as Ben Bradlee Jr. Stanley Tucci as Mitchell Garabedian, and Billy Crudup as Eric Macleish. It's a talented cast and they were all good but the stand out was Ruffalo. His portrayal of Rezendes was electrifying and he was the one I'm sure most viewers will gravitate to. He voices his anger in such an impactful and profound way about this story that it inspires others of his team to get off their hands and to even fall on their swords. I've always thought Mark was a solid to good actor, thanks to Spotlight he just became great in my opinion.
The movie eschewed any nice aerial shots of Boston, the camera work was nothing special, it wasn't a pretty film to look at. In fact it was almost drab but with this particular subject matter making this movie something visually interesting would have almost been inappropriate. Cinematographer Masayobu Takayanagi kept Spotlight visually close to the vest when you compare it to his previous film, Black Mass which visually arresting. The piano heavy score by Howard Shore was disappointing. This was a chance for a really dark melodic score considering the subject and instead what we received something that seemed rudderless. There was nothing memorable here and I know this Oscar award winning composer is better than this. As I said earlier the subject matter for Spotlight feels like it's ten years too late but when it comes to molested children at the hands of some of the most trusted men in the communities, stories like this never get old. That's one of the issues I have with recommending Spotlight, but if you do see it...brace yourself and I'll see you at the theater.
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