A truly powerful film and a true story that will anger you to your core, SPOTLIGHT turns a glaringly bright light on the massive cover up of child abuse within the Catholic church.
In the late 90's, the SPOTLIGHT investigate team at the Boston Globe, under the fresh eyes of its new editor from Miami, focuses on an emerging story of a Boston priest who has sexually abused as many as 20 children.
Editor Marty Baron (Liev Schrieber) is tellingly NOT two things that give him perspective on the story, not Catholic and not from Boston.
As Marty and his team discover peeling back layers of deceit, cover up and payoffs, Boston is a big town with a small town attitude on covering it's own, especially within the centuries of tradition and reverence for the Catholic church.
Spotlight's division head Robby (Michael Keaton), lead investigator Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) and reporter Sacha (Rachel McAdams) all find their personal history with the church challenged as they discover a massive cover up and knowledge of repetitive abuse at the highest level of the Archdiocese and beyond.
Brian d'Arcy James, John Slattery and Stanley Tucci are terrific as well, as key players that unwrap the horrible secrets showing a pattern of abuse and cover up stretching back decades in Boston.
This is a true story.
The Catholic church had 87 priests in BOSTON alone that had sexually abused children and were "moved" or put on sick leave and then REASSIGNED in another parish, often working directly with children, again and again.
Its sickening and outrageous.
The Spotlight team works for a year on a story that will show amazing levels of evidence, most of it from within the church itself of the cover ups. Director Tom McCarthy propels the story forward at a terrific pace.
Keaton and Ruffalo are at their best. For me, this is a far better performance from Keaton that last year's "Birdman". Ruffalo will likely win a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his work here. You feel every bit of his frustration as the institution he grew up in is revealed as an enabler of predatory sexual abuse of thousands of children.
The film details the facts of the institutional madness within the church, with an average of SIX PERCENT of all priests worldwide acting out sexual abuse of children. These children are being targeted. They are mostly fatherless, from poor backgrounds and hungry for a strong male figure in their lives.
What the church did and covered up for, then perpetuated is unforgivable.
Watch the closing moments for the facts around the size and scale of this abuse and be horrified.
Filled with flawless acting, taut direction, perfect art direction and set design recalling the era and a powerful screenplay, SPOTLIGHT is the best journalistic screen thriller since "All The President's Men" and gets an A+.
Nominated for 6 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Director (McCarthy), Supporting Actor (Ruffalo), Supporting Actress (McAdams), Original Screenplay and Editing.
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