Spotlight

Despite its unassuming title, Spotlight boasts a story which makes it a film everyone must see. The title of the film is drawn from the Boston Globe’s investigative journalism team who uncovered the atrocities committed by a remarkably large number of Catholic Priests, firstly in Boston and then later around the world.

This film could easily have become slow, plodding and depressing – but it masterfully avoids those pitfalls by mixing the overarching story of the Catholic Church with the day-to-day task of digging through documents and chasing leads while researching the horrors, the stories of some of the survivors, and finally the tales of the four journalists tasked with the high pressure assignment.

Those four journalists, Walter “Robby” Robinson (Michael Keaton), Sacha Pfieffer (Rachel McAdams), Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) and Matt Carroll (Brian d’Arcy James) are played expertly, with each of them having very distinctive personalities and individual stories to convey.

Spotlight is a masterpiece in that it manages to perfectly balance all of these separate yet intertwined stories, and ensure each piece of the puzzle seems just as relevant as the last. This is one of the best films to tackle investigative journalism and leaves the audience with the nagging question of what will happen to this type of journalism if newspapers continue down the path we see today. (JA)

****1/2