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Official Discussion: The Report [SPOILERS]
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Summary:
Idealistic staffer Daniel J. Jones is tasked by his boss Senator Dianne Feinstein to lead an investigation of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program, which was created in the aftermath of 9/11. Jones' relentless pursuit of the truth leads to explosive findings that uncover the lengths to which the nation's top intelligence agency went to destroy evidence, subvert the law, and hide a brutal secret from the American public.
Director:
Scott Z. Burns
Writers:
screenplay by Scott Z. Burns
Cast:
- Adam Driver as Daniel Jones
- Annette Bening as Dianne Feinstein
- Jon Hamm as Denis McDonough
- Jennifer Morrison as Caroline Krass
- Tim Blake Nelson as Raymond Nathan
- Ben McKenzie as Scrubbed CIA Officer
- Jake Silbermann as Yoked up CIA Officer
- Matthew Rhys as New York Times Reporter
- Ted Levine as John Brennan
- Michael C. Hall as Thomas Eastman
- Maura Tierney as Bernadette
- Sarah Goldberg as April
- Lucas Dixon as Julian
- Dominic Fumusa as George Tenet
- Noah Bean as Martin Heinrich
- Douglas Hodge as James Elmer Mitchell
- Corey Stoll as Cyrus Clifford
- T. Ryder Smith as Bruce Jessen
- Fajer Al-Kaisi as Ali Soufan
- Linda Powell as Marcy Morris
- John Rothman as Sheldon Whitehouse
- Joanne Tucker as Gretchen
- Ian Blackman as Cofer Black
- Zuhdi Boueri as Abu Zubaydah
- Carlos Gomez as Jose Rodriguez
- Ratnesh Dubey as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
- Scott Shepherd as Mark Udall
- Kate Beahan as Candace Ames
- James Hindman as Inspector General Buckley
- Austin Michael Young as Agent Miller
- Joseph Siravo as John Rizzo
Rotten Tomatoes: 83%
Metacritic: 66/100
After Credits Scene? No
VOD: Amazon
Top Comment: Having just finished watching it, I really enjoyed it. It was surprisingly engaging for something that’s essentially about a 7000 page report. I think it’s an important film for people to watch as well. It’s such a shame looking at the IMDb reviews and seeing a bunch of 1 and 2 star reviews saying ‘it’s liberal crap’ and ‘torture works, this movie is lying’. It’s frustrating that this happens so frequently nowadays, where people leave negative reviews when they have no legitimate criticism. They just can’t handle the fact that it makes ‘their side’ look bad.
Did I like "The Report", or do I like the idea of a film on the subject?
Main Post:
I started thinking about this when I was watching The Report, the 2019 Scott Z. Burns film with Adam Driver. Performances good all around. I'm vulnerable to modern Hollywood production. I don't think I checked the time once. It wasn't until the final shot that I made any note of the filmmaking on display. Something about the final shot just struck me as a little auto-pilot. Lacking personality. Driver walks away from the Capitol building and the film tells us where they all ended up. We wait for the inevitable final comment that the bad guys all got away with it.
It made me think of why I had enjoyed or at least tolerated the film so openly up to that point. Did I like watching the film, or did I like watching a film about the torture report? Consider this film wasn't made for another two years, with an entirely different creative team, and we assume modern film conventions remain the same. Would it really be all that different? When you see "Untitled Panama Papers Project" on IMDb, how far off was your imagination when you see it two or three years later?
Everyone loves Queen. There was always going to be a Queen film. Does it even have to be good? Is it embraced for its merits, or because it's the modern film about Queen?
Small note: The Report isn't the best example because there is more than a degree of competency on display here. The film could have been far more boring. Driver and Burns worked well together and elevated the material a smidge above it's constraints, that deserves to be said.
Top Comment: There can be a difference between enjoying a film and loving the content in it. The example you gave was great: Queen is an awesome band and I can’t fault people for loving Bohemian Rhapsody because of it, but I would argue it’s a bad movie. For me, I don’t really care the motivations behind enjoying a film. If you had fun watching the film, rate it however you’d like to! It may not be the most technically impressive, and it may not be a GOOD movie, but does it matter? For me, my weak spot is the Chernobyl incident. I’ve been borderline obsessed with it since I learned about it my freshman year of high school. So when the Chernobyl miniseries came out this year I had myself a feast of content that fascinates me. Is it the greatest thing? Definitely not. But I had no shame in rating it 5/5 on Letterboxd because of my immense enjoyment of it (and it helped that it’s very professionally made). Overall, I don’t particularly find it necessary to differentiate motivations when enjoying a film. I think you’re right in that there is a difference between enjoying a movie and whether the movie is truly a good movie. But if you love a movie it doesn’t really matter does it?