Spotlight Shines with Conviction

Rating: 10/10 (20 May 2016)

Spotlight 2015 2hr. 8 min.
Childhood molestation and the Catholic Church has been a hot button issue since the early 2000's. With scandals of Priests molesting young children and the Cardinal's all around the world sweeping these issues under the rug by reassigning priests to other churches to wreak more havoc among other young children at other churches. Pope Francis visited America, this past fall and several survivors of molestation's have been very critical of the Catholic Church and wanted justice for the victims of this tragic failure of the church to take responsibility for various priests' actions by arresting and convicting these so called priests. In the city of Boston Massachusetts, a newspaper and 4 investigators that are called "Spotlight" decided to focus on the church scandal following the hiring of the Jewish editor Marty Baron (Liv Schreiber) of the newspaper called The Boston Globe. The head of the Spotlight team is a man called Walter Robinson (well played by Michael Keaton) who leads the charge of getting to the bottom of these allegations and another spotlight investigator, Mike Renzende ( Mark Ruffalo) attempts to talk to the leading attorney, who represented some thirty victims of the scandals. Mitchell Garabedian (Stanley Tucci) who wants justice even though the settlement sum for the victims is very low. Garabedian, professes to Renzende that he tells his clients that what they are doing coming forward, was the right thing to do. There is the defense attorney, who represents the church, who tells Robinson that the Boston Globe had this case 5 years earlier, but choose not to follow up. The other two reporters Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams) and Matt Carrol (Brian d'Arcy James) attempt to track down various Priests and victims and to hear their stories. One person who talks to Pfeiffer is a gay man, who kept his secret for years, because the Priest said performing sexual acts on him was a good thing. The priest also says to the victim that he should approves of same sex love, and the victim struggles with shame and guilt over his own internal feelings of trusting a man of faith. Another startling scene, is when Pfeiffer talks to a Priest, who freely admits to molesting young boys and defends his actions because he confesses that he was molested as a child. The conversation ends when the former priest sister come in and abruptly ending the interview. There is a scene when Renzende wants to publish the story of at least 30 victims of the abuse with Robinson contending that the case is so much bigger than they spotlight gang can handle. Rendenze wants to investigate more victims and the Catholic Church. The two people get into a shouting match and both characters make legitimate points and the resolution of their conflict is convincing and leads to a conclusion that is just and accurate in its depiction of investigative journalism. The performances are first rate especially by Ruffalo, who is a lapsed Catholic, who was considering rejoining the Catholic church until the he begins to investigate the story. John Slattery, is also good who is the commander in chief of the Boston Globe and Keaton is supreme as the man who doesn't realize until the end that the story could have been investigated sooner than he realizes. The film reminds me of the great 1976 film "All the President Men" about two writers from the Washington Post Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward (played by actors Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford) covering Watergate and investigating Nixon crimes while he was in office. A character named Deep throat exposes Nixon corruption and irresponsibility that leads to his downfall. The two films have one great thing in common, they are about justice and seeking truth among the people who hold a high regard for. These two films are about truth, justice and how we need to call out the deceit and betrayal that our leaders where albeit a clergyman, to the President of the United States. We as citizens of the world need to call out hypocrisy in society and to hold those responsible accountable for their illicit actions.