"Spotlight" highlights an important issue in a film I wish I could have liked more.

Rating: 6/10 (2 January 2016)

"Spotlight" Cast a Shadow on the Catholic Church
With an all-star cast and a compelling story, "Spotlight" delivers a blandly straightforward telling of the priest sex-abuse scandal and cover-up through the investigative story featured in the Boston Globe in the early 2000s. The city of Boston was torn apart by the scandal that had lasted for decades, and according the film, many people worked to shield the Church from the consequences of the scandal. Without the cover-up, the scandal would not have lasted so long.
However well done and easy to follow the story was, it was predictable. Few revelations were made for me. Certainly, it is an important story to tell, and I am glad I saw the film. However, none of the characters lived up to the power of story itself and the actors adding little to its telling. This may be the case of too much story, too little screen time. The film attempted in a couple of cases to make the suffering of the survivors real, but it played like an episode of "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit" and not like a feature film. It was too small for such a lofty topic.
In the film, they often mentioned that people died, but it seemed unreal. Examples of that were need to bring it home. The film covered too much time without making the connections for the audience. I really want to like this film more, but it fails as cinema in too many ways. It would have made a better Lifetime Channel Drama as it was written. Rating: Matinée
"Spotlight" is good but not great. After a while, Mark Ruffalo's (playing lead reporter Mike Rezendez) pained expression wears thin. Does he have any other look? Not much in this film. Stanley Tucci puts in a good turn as a lawyer working with the survivors, but the rest of the cast is pedestrian. Perhaps it was the writing, but the film and characters didn't greatly impact me despite the best intentions of the filmmakers and the tragedy of the true story.
Peace,
Tex Shelters