cover-up

I’ve said before how much I enjoy films about institutional cover-ups and the legal and media process of uncovering them. Hadn’t got round to this one until now. My librarian tendencies will show when I say that the best parts are the archive-digging ones: church directories, the euphemisms in the personnel listings (sick leave, unassigned), four reporters slowly working out just how many names that adds up to. Ruffalo gives Rezendes the right kind of intensity. McAdams does things with greater calm but no less well. Liev Schreiber plays Marty Baron at roughly half the volume of anyone else in the room, and makes me wonder why we don’t see much more of him in big-screen roles.

Most of Riz Ahmed’s acting happens through his eyes—Ash barely speaks aloud, his lines passed through a telephone relay operator. That constraint sharpens everything, and it’s all gruff exchanges, mailed packages and payphone protocols. Then the ending arrives, and it crumbles. A script this fastidious about process shouldn’t ask you to swallow quite that much.

There is absolutely no need for either Damon or Affleck to be in this, although they do improve it.