It’s got a big ensemble cast, but if you want a measure of what “Spotlight” does very, very well, keep an eye on the new guy.
In the film’s opening minutes, new editor Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) arrives at the Boston Globe. In Schreiber’s canny performance, Baron is woefully free of warm ’n fuzzies; he’s a blunt outsider in a clubby town — he came from Miami, for crying out loud.
We spot him as a corporate stooge who will surely act as antagonist to the Globe’s band of reporter heroes, those hard-talking pros with their sleeves rolled up. In a story full of hard-won disclosures, Baron’s gradual emergence as a beacon of journalistic integrity and moral conviction is perhaps the movie’s subtlest revelation.
Baron presided over a Pulitzer Prize-winning 2002 Globe exposé, which reported on the Catholic Church’s cover-up of widespread sexual abuse of minors by priests. “Spotlight” tells this story through multiple viewpoints: Deputy Managing Editor Ben Bradlee, Jr. (John Slattery), investigative team leader Robby Robinson (Michael Keaton), and Globe reporters played by Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, and Brian d’Arcy James.
The approach allows us to see how the scandal permeates every level of Boston society, from blue-collar Catholic neighborhoods where disgraced priests are hidden to tony golf courses where church attorneys share the links with socialite Bradlee (yes, the son of the Washington Post editor immortalized by “All the President’s Men,” a movie that looms large behind this one).
Terrific story, and director Tom McCarthy (“The Visitor”) mostly lays off the hard sell. If anything, “Spotlight” is a little too respectable; McCarthy and co-screenwriter Josh Singer hit each scene exactly on the button, and then move on to the next one.
And what excuse is there for how washed-out the film looks? The filmmakers say they studied “All the President’s Men,” but did they actually see it?
Nevertheless, “Spotlight” excels at digging into the nooks and crannies of deep-seated corruption and making those shadowed places come to credible life.
McCarthy, an actor himself, casts some glorious people to embody the participants in this system: along with the starry main cast, there’s Stanley Tucci and Billy Crudup as lawyers with different views of justice; Len Cariou as the powerful Cardinal Law; and particularly longtime character actors Paul Guilfoyle and Jamey Sheridan, who serve up nuanced portrayals of complacency and guilt.
Arriving at a time when our culture appears to have embraced the idea that it is better to believe what you want to believe and that “the media” is not to be trusted, “Spotlight” creates excitement from the day-to-day business of recognizing uncomfortable facts.
“Spotlight” (3 stars)
A well-cast chronicle of how the Boston Globe broke a 2002 story about the Catholic Church’s cover-up of widespread child abuse by priests. Director Tom McCarthy tends to hit things squarely on the nose, but the film tells a terrific true story. With Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams.
Rating: R, for subject matter, language
Showing: Meridian
A Conversation with Robby Robinson
Whidbey Island Center for the Arts will host a conversation with reporter and editor for the Boston Globe Walter “Robby” Robinson at 7:30 p.m Dec. 6 at WICA. Robinson’s Spotlight team, an investigative unit for the Globe, is the subject of the film “Spotlight.” Tickets are available until noon the day of the show at www.wicaonline.org or by phone at 360-221-8268 or 800-638-7631.
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