Review: SPOTLIGHT Illuminates, Rivets

Tom McCarthy's new film SPOTLIGHT dramatizes the Pulitzer Prize-winning Boston Globe investigation that began with one "bad apple" priest and led to the discovery of a massive, decades-long institutional cover-up of countless sexual abuse allegations in the Boston archdiocese. Set in 2001, McCarthy's film traces the year-long investigation by the Boston Globe's "Spotlight" team, a four-person investigative team that was ultimately responsible for not only breaking the local story, but for pushing the topic into the national discourse.

It crossed my mind, after watching SPOTLIGHT, that so many of the best films about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church are documentaries. DELIVER US FROM EVIL. HBO's TWIST OF FAITH and MEA MAXIMA CULPA: SILENCE IN THE HOUSE OF GOD (which featured the voices of SPOTLIGHT actors John Slattery and Jamey Sheridan). HAND OF GOD, which aired as an episode of Frontline on PBS.

SPOTLIGHT is now one of those films (and one of the best of the year), so it may not be a coincidence that, at it's best, SPOTLIGHT feels the same -- like a documentary. McCarthy and co. have captured a level of realism, through straightforward direction and grounded performances, that is daring when you consider that journalism is not, in and of itself, dramatic. Unless you're one of those intrepid reporters darting in and out of warzones around the world, the process can be quite dull, colored by the same mundanity of everyday office life -- lots of research, hours click-clacking away at a keyboard, staring off into space thinking. It's a testament to the script, McCarthy's direction, and his actors that watching people type into an Excel spreadsheet is as tense as it is.

McCarthy is masterful at setting the tone of the film. He keeps the pace taut, successfully establishing a tangible, if vague, threat looming over the team the deeper their investigation digs. The escalating tension, particularly in scenes when McCarthy switches to hand-held (like in an excellent scene between Keaton and Jamey Sheridan) or in scenes with the characters running (of which there are several -- running through the office, running to the courthouse, running down the block late at night) is palpable.

Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams and Brian d'Arcy James are the "Spotlight" team. The script, written by McCarthy and Josh Singer, resists the unnecessary impulse to dive too deeply into the personal lives of these characters. They instead, in little glimpses, show the ways in which the characters take their work home with them, situating the characters in relation to each other, their co-workers, and of course the Catholic Church. All are well-played, and likeable, but the interactions between Keaton and Ruffalo are standout. As Mike Rezendes, Ruffalo is restless energy and emotional intensity, and an excellent counterpoint to Keaton's character, Walter "Robby" Robinson.

Supporting the "Spotlight" team are Liev Schreiber, Stanley Tucci, Billy Crudup and Jamey Sheridan. Again, all turn in great performances, but Schreiber, as new Globe editor Marty Baron, is especially important. The arrival of Schreiber's Baron is the impetus for the investigation. Baron is established as an outsider, and the Globe's first Jewish editor, who comes in with the goal of making the paper "essential" to its readers (53% of which are Catholic). Schreiber is gruff and no-nonsense, and a strong presence felt in every scene he is in. The performances from Neal Huff, Michael Cyril Creighton, and Jimmy LeBlanc are also nuanced and distinct, and bring a lot of emotional weight to the film.

I will note that, in terms of the escalating narrative, the reveal to the "Spotlight" team that the problem is bigger and runs deeper than they originally thought is, well, obvious. Mainly because we already know -- if not from the working knowledge many of us will enter the theater with (a point driven home by the film's conclusion), than from the film's (unnecessary) opening. But that's a nitpick. SPOTLIGHT is well directed, acted, and edited. It's not to be missed.

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SPOTLIGHT, starring Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, Brian D'Arcy James and Stanley Tucci, is rated R for some language including sexual references.

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