Movie Review: Spotlight

Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo and Brian d'Arcy play journalists in Spotlight.

Journalists have suffered harshly at the hands of Hollywood scriptwriters and directors over the years but in Spotlight, they are the heroes of this superb film.

I felt proud to be part of the noble professional after watching this outstanding piece of cinema.

It follows a dedicated team of reporters at the Boston Globe newspaper in 2002 when they broke open the scandal of alleged sexual violation of minors by Catholic priests and subsequent cover-up by the church hierarchy in Boston.

The arrival of a new editor-in-chief in Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) is the catalyst.

He asks the gun investigative team, called Spotlight, to look into whether the case of paedophilia linked to one defrocked priest John Geoghan is not an isolated instance.

The Spotlight team led by Walter Robinson (Michael Keaton) takes centre stage, with the three reporters refusing to take no for an answer.

It takes them five months of dedicated digging, helped greatly by litigation lawyer Mitchell Garabedian (Stanley Tucci), before the first breaking story hits the front page.

Mark Ruffalo gives an outstanding performance as pugnacious reporter Mike Redenzes, with his sidekick Rachel McAdams (Sacha Pfeiffer) a close second.

Director Tom McCarthy cleverly puts the audience right there in the newsroom and knocking on doors with the reporters as their investigation begins to unravel a massive story of widespread abuse.

He does not sidetrack with newsroom romances or flashbacks to priests taking advantage of their young prey.

And that helps keep the plot focused and makes Spotlight such an easy film to become totally engrossed in.

The Boston Globe team was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for their work, which created more than 200 published stories on the abuse scandal.

Spotlight deserves all the attention it is getting, with six Oscar nominations including Best Picture.

This is one film that you do not want to miss this year.

Spotlight
Directed by Tom McCarthy