The Report. (15.)
Directed by Scott Z. Burns.
Starring Adam Driver, Annette Bening, Jon Hamm, Corey Stoll, Maura Tierney, Michael C. Hall and Tim Blake Nelson. 120 mins.
The story of a 7,000-page document that very few people will ever read but was worth writing is told in this film that very few people will see but was still worth making. The report is the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation into the CIA's use of torture – sorry, Enhanced Interrogation Techniques – after 9/11, and the story is its writer's, Dan Jones (Driver), struggle to get it published after he and his small team had spent five years researching it.
The Report's main virtue is the clarity with which it lays out the facts of its complex story. For some reason, the film was shown to us with the SDH subtitles on, and that certainly helped but even without them the film does wonders helping you keep all the names, dates and facts straight in your head. It's a very interesting story, but not if we're being honest an overly dramatic one. A few shots of Driver striding past Washing monuments can't liven up a film that is all people talking in brightly lit rooms, or being tortured in darkly lit rooms to the accompaniment of Marilyn Manson. (His music, not him in person.)
Directed by Scott Z. Burns.
Starring Adam Driver, Annette Bening, Jon Hamm, Corey Stoll, Maura Tierney, Michael C. Hall and Tim Blake Nelson. 120 mins.
The story of a 7,000-page document that very few people will ever read but was worth writing is told in this film that very few people will see but was still worth making. The report is the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation into the CIA's use of torture – sorry, Enhanced Interrogation Techniques – after 9/11, and the story is its writer's, Dan Jones (Driver), struggle to get it published after he and his small team had spent five years researching it.
The Report's main virtue is the clarity with which it lays out the facts of its complex story. For some reason, the film was shown to us with the SDH subtitles on, and that certainly helped but even without them the film does wonders helping you keep all the names, dates and facts straight in your head. It's a very interesting story, but not if we're being honest an overly dramatic one. A few shots of Driver striding past Washing monuments can't liven up a film that is all people talking in brightly lit rooms, or being tortured in darkly lit rooms to the accompaniment of Marilyn Manson. (His music, not him in person.)
