Defrocking the priest

Rating: 7/10 (10 September 2018)

I have a friend who is a devout Catholic who likes to tell people how historically the Catholic priesthood had always traditionally attracted homosexuals. All these men, allegedly celibate who all lived together.
Spotlight based on true events is how the Boston Globe newspaper stumbled on a story of abusive priests in Boston and how they were protected by the top Cardinal in Boston. Cardinal Law would had the victims paid off and then moved them around so they would live to abuse another day.
The Spotlight team of the Globe are requested by their new editor to investigate and their diligence pays off. They uncover a horde of abusive priests who damaged generations of children.
Director Tom McCarthy aimed to make a modern version of All the President's Men. They even have a Ben Bradley but it is junior the son of the great editor of The Washington Post. McCarthy treats the film as a procedural. It starts off as a weak story, most of the journalists are not interested in investigating the Catholic church that still has a big foothold in Boston.
However as the team probes they uncover more layers, more victims, more deviant priests and the newspapers own failings. Several people tell the journalists that information and documents was sent to them in the past and they did nothing.
The film benefits from the acting of its ensemble cast ranging from Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo to Billy Crudup. Liev Schreiber is very restrained here, unusually for a newspaper editor bought in to shake things up. Ruffalo has the more showy role. It is not a greatly photographed film, there are several nice shots but it really comes across as a lower budget film.