Riveting procedural hampered by an emotional distance

Rating: 7/10 (1 April 2016)

This years Academy Award Best Picture line-up was one of the most underwhelming in recent memory, but there was a little cheer when director Tom McCarthy's underdog Spotlight took home the top prize. My personal favourite of the nominees, The Big Short, lost out, and the stand-out film of the year, Inside Out, wasn't even on the list (although it took home the Best Animated Feature), but the lack of truly great films this year doesn't take anything away from Spotlight, which is a riveting little procedural hampered by a surprising emotional distance from the disturbing subject matter.
Like most films set amongst the huddled office meetings, desk- thumping and pen-chewing of the newspaper room, Spotlight takes its inspiration from Alan J. Pakula's seminal All the President's Men (1976), and concerns itself solely on the noble efforts of the staff trying to piece together that big story that will change everything. Here, we're at the Boston Globe in 2001, and the newspapers new editor Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) and almost instantly notices the importance of delving deeper into eccentric lawyer Mitchel Garabedian's (Stanley Tucci) accusation that Cardinal Law (Len Cariou) has covered up the molestation of various children by a priest in their very city.
Baron hands the task to Spotlight, a team consisting of 'Robby' Robinson (Michael Keaton), Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams) and Matt Carroll (Brian D'Arcy James), who takes months exhaustively researching their subject matter before publishing their findings. What they uncovered were hundreds of cases in Boston alone of child molestation by priests, and the fact that this was ignored by people in a position to do much more. In fact, some of the most powerful moments come from the revelations that some of the Boston Globe staff sat on the story for years without taking notice of the extent of the abuse. With Operation Yewtree still hitting the headlines here in the UK, the subject of sweeping these kinds of cases under the rug couldn't be more relevant.
Spotlight depicts, in breathtaking detail, the work carried out by Robinson and his team to uncover the truth and to obtain the required evidence. Keaton, after last years Birdman, gives another assured performance, and Ruffalo is routinely terrific as the pit- bull Rezendes. Aesthetically, the film cannot be faulted, and McCarthy sticks strictly to the facts. However, the lack of an emotional connection means the film does not induce the kind of anger it really should. Without doubt the movies stand-out scene is Pfeiffer's reaction to a priests blunt response to her equally blunt questioning, and the film should maintain the sort of power and shock this moment inspires, but keeps itself frustratingly distant. Spotlight is still an accomplished piece of work with some sparkling dialogue, and McCarthy hints that he may have found the same form he had with his terrific debut The Station Agent (2003).