Spotlight (2015) * * * 1/2

Directed by:  Tom McCarthy

Starring:  Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, Rachel McAdams, Len Cariou, Brian D'Arcy James, Stanley Tucci, Billy Crudup

Spotlight is a gripping story of the pains of investigative journalism.    This is a career I thought I wanted when I started college, but I am glad I shifted to another direction.    Journalism is a job for people willing to deal with rejection, criticism, being under the microscope, getting hung up on, and having doors slammed in their faces.    I am not among those people.     The Boston Globe reporters in Spotlight endured months of these obstacles before finally breaking an eventual 2002 Pulitzer-prize winning story of the Boston Archdiocese's complicity in covering up for priests who molested children.    Not just one or two priests, or one or two children, but nearly 100 priests and over 1000 victims.     "The problem is systemic," says Globe editor Marty Baron (Schreiber).    He was right. 

The cover-up not only served the church's interests and coffers, but enriched local attorneys who secretly bartered settlements for the victims that were tantamount to hush money.    The pain of the victims endures regardless.    Years pass until the victims, at long last, gain the opportunity to tell their stories to the Globe reporters.     The reporters, part of the "Spotlight" team of investigative journalists, are not cynical people looking for a great story.    They care and want to do good.    They hope the story will put an end to the darkness for the victims.    They want to see justice done at long last, even if the statute of limitations ran out years ago.

Throughout the film, I recalled the 2012 Alex Gibney documentary Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God.    That was a heartbreaking film, which depicted a group of deaf men who were molested as children by predatory priests.    The film also widened its scope to worldwide abuse cases in which the Catholic church powers as high as the Vatican were complicit in covering them up.    The 2002 story by the Globe helped break the silence and the church rightly suffered.     They were forced to pay billions in restitution to the victims and endure a backlash that continues today.    There was also a rift in the trust between the communities and the church.    Priests were no longer seen as God, but as potential predators, even those who did not engage in such practices.    

The Globe, like many newspapers even today, began to realize the effects of the internet on newspaper circulations as the film opens in June 2001.    New editor Baron arrives from Florida in an effort to turn around the Globe's waning fortunes.    He is so out of tune with Boston that he reads up on "The Curse of the Bambino" to learn the local culture.    What he soon discovers is the community's seemingly unquestioned trust in the Catholic church, even amidst allegations of abuse that go back decades.    The children were convinced that they imagined the abuse and the parents mostly bought it in order to hide their shame.    In this backwards scenario, the victims would be seen as the ones who ought to be ashamed.    After all, who are they to impugn God like that?    It's a sad state.  

The Spotlight team is led by Walter "Robbie" Robinson (Keaton), a veteran, raspy Bostonian tired of being assigned boring stories about police corruption.    When Baron discovers a tiny article about possible priest abuse in one of the back sections of the paper, he assigns the Spotlight team to dig deeper.    This invigorates the reporters, Michael Rezendes (Ruffalo), Sacha Pfeiffer (McAdams), and Matt Carroll (James), who begin to seek out victims, leads, and something to blow the lid off of this thing.    The church has many powerful political and financial allies.    Many are unwilling to talk or go on the record.    Rezendes tracks down eccentric local attorney Mitchell Garabedian (Tucci) who has been representing victims for years.    Garabedian is at first hesitant to trust Rezendes, but soon they are allies.    Rezendes also finds an invaluable resource in an author who wrote about the abuse phenomenon long before the cases ever saw the light of day.    He sees the abuse as part of a systemic problem which has plagued the church for decades, maybe even centuries.

The church, in a short-sighted unwillingness to deal with the problem before it spiraled out of control, would habitually move offending priests to different parishes under the cover of leaves of absences and sick leaves.    All of this is discovered slowly and painstakingly over the course of many months.    9/11 also intervenes, temporarily forcing suspension of the story.

Spotlight is refreshingly not about crusading, self-important reporters with an ax to grind.    They are horrified discover the abuse going on right under the city's noses.    They care about the community, even if the community doesn't want to hear the news.    It is in the tradition of All The President's Men (1976) in which reporters discover a story they feel is of vital interest to the community and refuse to let it die.    In President's Men, the story is vital to the nation.    The Globe story will soon become that important as well.     The reporters work tirelessly, eschewing leisure time and in some cases even basic needs, to deliver the goods on time.  

There are no leading roles in Spotlight.    Each actor plays a significant part of the team.    They do not engage in "look at me trying to win an Oscar" acting flourishes, but instead deliver solid performances.    Director McCarthy briefly touches on the personal lives of the reporters, but mostly they discuss unseen spouses and family members.    The focus is intense.    Thank goodness there were no obligatory scenes of neglected spouses having come to Jesus arguments with the reporters over the endless hours put in at the expense of their families.    In some cases, spouses are mentioned once and then never again.   

Spotlight delivers a powerful story because it focuses equally on the plight of the victims.   Yes, the story will sell papers and keep the wolves away from the door for the Globe, but the greater good is also being done finally after years of being forgone.    I do have to wonder about how Rezendes was able to uncover the seemingly lost documents which basically revealed the church's wrongdoing.   Garabedian says they were lost thanks to the church, but Rezendes was able to come up with them without much effort.    The sequence puzzled me, but aside from that, Spotlight is an engrossing film.