Spotlight: Film Review
Cast: Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci
Director: Tom McCarthy
Already showered in award nominations and wins, Tom McCarthy's powerhouse Spotlight is both an ode to the journalism of the past and a commentary on the present.
Against a backdrop of change, when a new editor Marty Baron (a relatively muted but engaging Liev Schreiber) enters the world of the Boston Globe newspaper, a small journalistic unit called the Spotlight team is given the job of investigating allegations of abuse from Catholic priests. But the further the team looks, the bigger the problem appears to be...

It's hard to single out any member of the ensemble for praise in this because they all deliver in many different textured ways; from Schreiber's quietly driven editor brought in to bring change and whose impetus propels the Spotlight team along to Tucci's nigh on impressive lawyer, this is a cast that are on the top of their game.
It helps largely that McCarthy's working off such a strong script, one that never stoops to preach its sins of the fathers storyline but one which also never sermonizes and talks down to its audience as well. It's a good solid film of good solid performances where less is more and where montages take the strain of a lot of the transitions.

Spotlight works as it keeps a singular focus on story and narrative; it never deviates from that and becomes a film that quietly and mightily impresses from beginning to end.
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