Involving topical story, excellent performances but not a great movie

Rating: 6/10 (29 June 2017)

I watched this film with high expectations, as the warmly favourable criticisms published on the media together with the viewers' ratings in IMDb seemed to unanimously commend it as one of the best films of the year. Overall I was rather disappointed. Not that I did not enjoy the film, but I thought that its making was kind of perfunctionary, not as gripping and involving as its subject allowed for. What I mean is that there was no suspense at all. Its documentary style simply displayed and unfolded the facts in a kind of smooth monotonous way. Indeed the real story which it tells is terribly shocking and heart-wrenching by itself, but it was dealt with without much passion or cinematic warmth. I think that the film is sustained only by two elements, which at least are strong enough to make it enjoyable: the story and the cast. The performances of all the actors are outstanding in this film, the best on my view being those by Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber and Stanley Tucci. Apart from that, not a specially remarkable movie. sorry to disagree with the majority opinion.