Spotlight

Certificate: 15

Director: Tom McCarthy

Running Time: 2h 8m

Cast: Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci, Billy Crudup

Rating: ***1/2

Spotlight is a powerful, tense and thrilling biographical film, which highlights a heartbreaking topic, reminding us of the horrendous actions that evil people can do, and the scary part is any people! However Tom McCarthy portrays the story in a well crafted and thoughtful journalistic way with powerful performances; bringing this tight knit, low key, film to life with a strong impact for the audience to walk away and remember this story.

The film follows The Boston Globe's Spotlight team, who are the oldest continuously operating newspaper investigative unit in America, and their investigation into cases of widespread and systemic child sex abuse in the Boston Area by numerous Roman Catholic priests and the cover up of this case.

Whilst the story line is one that needs to be handled sensitively, especially as this is a true event, McCarthy does well to create a dramatic pace to keep audiences on edge, one scene specifically is when Rachel McAdams as reporter Sacha Pfeiffer, eagerly interviews a retired priest on his doorstep and ask him up front whether he has ever molested a child, and the resulting answer to that scene will have you on edge. However with the dramatic pace there is a subplot of the terror of challenging the church’s authority, as the repercussions could be worse for Spotlight and their reporters. Yet there is no challenge from the church that we see onscreen, therefore this plot creates paranoia within the spotlight group which adds to the intensity of the film, but there is no outcome which is slight letdown.

Every member of the cast; Ruffalo, Keaton, McAdams, Tucci and the rest provide incredible performances, but Ruffalo specifically has a scene where his emotions gets the best of him and it truly does impact the audience as you feel the upset and anger he feels.

Spotlight, is a grown-up film about serious people and in some way it is more thrilling than most action movies. With a great cast who provide such power to a disheartening issue, which is effective as this is certainly a relevant issue due to Yew-tree. Spotlight is a film you should go and see, as it shows how a film can impact you beyond the action fight scenes, this story is very important.