An important movie treated with great respect and compelling from start to finish.

Rating: 10/10 (31 January 2016)

"I'm just a poor boy from a poor family" says one of the victims of systematically covered up child abuse by paedophile Priests in Boston "and when a priest pays attention to you, it's a big deal. How do you say 'no' to God?"
The victim might well have added, as I did, subconsciously, the paraphrased words of Freddie Mercury "spare me my life from this monstrosity."
Because let's make no mistake here. This was a monstrosity.
The story is, on the surface, a journalistic procedural about the 'exposing' (no pun intended) of paedophile priests in Massachusetts (Boston specifically) by The Boston Globe's 'Spotlight' tiny hit squad at the turn of the millennium. The investigation is set into motion at the instruction of the ailing paper's then Editor, Marty Baron, played with callous inscrutability by Liev Scriver. It's a masterful performance.
Or at least that's how the movie's billed. In actual fact it becomes a complete deconstruction of the 'Three Estates' and commentary on their deep rooted self protection; the clergy, the news industry, the legal sector, the monied are all systematically pulverised in Josh Singer and Tom McCarthy's acid script.
No one comes out alive.
Including, tragically, many of the thousand and more victims of this institutionalised psychological 'phenomenon' that is peculiar to a significant minority (6% apparently) of the Catholic clergy, not just in Boston Massachusetts, but the first world over.
That's why this film is so important, because as we bemoan the effect of Islamic fundamentalism of the World order right now the Christian religion has been breeding just as insidious an evil, but from within and of its own, for decades (maybe, no probably, longer. As the movie opens it quickly becomes apparent that Spotlight is a commercial indulgence in the context of falling newsprint sales and the fledgling 'internet' bringing with it, as it did, almost unlimited free 24 hour news. The new editor, with a reputation for cutting the workforce elsewhere, initially looks at Spotlight (a team of four) with scepticism.
They grow their stories at leisure and have an unhealthily parochial attitude towards them. They look set for the chop until Baron learns of a priest who's been exposed and thinks it's a story for the Spotlight team. Apart from eager beaver, Mike Rezendez (another magnificent performance by the chameleon-like Mark Ruffalo) they're initially reluctant because they know the city 'mafia' (it's strongly Catholic and protects its own) will not make the task easy and could, in fact, boycott the title if the accusations are distasteful.
The Spotlight team go for it with vigour. The meat of the film gradually excavates the layers of deceit,and cover up executed by the Archbishop, his cronies and the legal profession who carry out extensive, but not particularly elaborate burial of evidence, misfiling of case reports and the turning of blind eyes right left and centre.
The police are implicated (no, accused) the most senior judiciary (some of them also Catholic) subvert and seal important files.
Frankly, the whole thing sucks.
And then 9/11 strikes, suddenly the world's eyes turn to Islam, including Spotlights'.
How ironic.
It's a tragic intervention in many ways because the team is making real progress; extracting victim stories from grown men, mainly but not exclusively, that agree to tell their stories and closing ion on the legal, clergy and city movers and shakers that are at the heart of the cover up.
But eventually the case resumes and we reach our inevitable and well publicised finale.
What Tom McCathy has achieved here is turn a movie into a fly on the wall docudrama, shot , as it is, in unglamourous fluorescent light for the most part. The lead performances by Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Michael Keaton and John Slattery are selfless. Spotlight is bigger than any of them. ( A special mention must also go to Stanley Tucci for playing the lawyer with a heart in an award worthy turn.)
The script is a whodunit of epic proportions and the content is both worthwhile and necessary and the sum is most certainly greater than the parts.
Praise to the real Spotlight team was ultimately massive (they won the Pulitzer prize for their efforts) but the impact it has had as it has resonated across not just the Boston Globe but its entirety makes this an effort of monumental proportions and the basis of a truly great movie that should win best picture at the 2016 Academy Awards.