Powerful Story, Powerfully Acted

Rating: 9/10 (22 November 2015)

There is not a bad performance in this dramatically powerful, profoundly sad story of a tiny group of idealists who take on their own religious faith, cultural heritage, and local Authority to defend the weak, violated, and oppressed. This is why some people got into journalism inspired by Watergate and All the President's Men, and why we desperately still need them as a counterbalance to pre-canned viewpoints (including many people on this very movie's message boards who reflexively condemn it before it was even released. There are only a few great journalistic enterprises left in this country still capable of the kind of honest rigor depicted here, and we are all poorer for their absence. See this movie for fabulous acting, see it for an honest portrayal of professional skill and ethics of the highest order, see it to remind yourself of the cliché that "all it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing," and ask yourself honestly what you would do in similar circumstances, especially if you, like most of us, don't buy ink by the barrel.