A traditional-style movie that grows on you

Rating: 10/10 (16 January 2016)

When this movie starts out, you could be forgiven for thinking that you are seeing *All the President's Men* or some other classic newspaper movie. Very much unlike *The Big Short*, for example, another of this year's feature-length films recounting a recent true story, there are no really innovative new approaches to movie making here.
But that is not to say that this movie holds no interest. Not at all. Unlike any of the classic newspaper movies I know, this one gets complicated when you start to suspect that there are people in the paper itself who are working against the journalists covering the big story.
You also start to wonder what involvement the journalists in question themselves may have had with similar situations, since they are all Boston Catholics themselves. Lots of old-fashioned close-ups of their faces, faces that are expressing anguished thoughts not put into words, leave you wondering. This is not like covering the Watergate break-in, you come to realize. These reporters are in fact discovering things about themselves, their upbringing, their community, as they probe ever more leads into cases of child abuse by Boston Catholic priests.
There is nothing innovative about the film making here, perhaps. But the script is written for intelligent adults, and demands your full attention, which it amply rewards.
This is not an easy movie to watch, frankly, because you end up viewing the case through the anguish of the reporters. In that sense, it takes the ability to see all this as new and horrifying, despite all we have learned since.
But it is very much a movie that is worth the effort, and the discomfort, to watch.