Summary:
A senate staffer is tasked to lead an investigation into the CIA’s ‘Enhanced Interrogation Techniques.”
My Thoughts:
Sometimes, when movies are based upon important events, getting the story out there is more important than the actual cinematic craft that goes into the film (I’m sure a hundred cinephiles are about to jump down my throat just now). “The Report” is an important film, one that I think many Americans should see because it’s an important and controversial part of our recent history, but, in terms of actual filmmaking, it’s not the best movie I’ve ever seen; in fact it’s pretty middling. I still feel compelled to recommend this film, but I do so out of a want for people to understand what the American Government is capable of doing, and what they still might be doing. It’s baffling to look at the American government’s behavior in this film, which took place over the last eighteen years, and then to look at our government now as they openly criticize the Chinese Government for detaining Muslims in their concentration camps. Some of the stats relayed in this film are pretty disturbing, particularly the amount of times certain prisoners were water boarded (one prisoner was water boarded over one-hundred-and-eighty times and never revealed new information), or the percentage of prisoners that were captured and tortured by the US, only for the US to realize the people had no involvement in terrorist activity (around 20%).
This film is important because it forces us take a look in the mirror and realize that we aren’t the shining star of a country that we sometimes claim to be. Our country has just as many dirty, disgusting, insidious secrets as the next; we’re just a bit wealthier and our scandals are a bit easier to cover up. Thank God, for freedom of speech and for good, hardworking people that are determined to uncover injustices. And while I compare what happened to some of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to the injustices that are happening in Chinese concentration camps, I do have to say that, in China, this film never would’ve been made. The fact that we as a country are willing to admit our atrocities to the world, and try to move forward from them makes us a little better than the governments that won’t acknowledge their wrongs; the fact that this film wouldn’t have been made in other countries alone is a reason to see it.
This film handles a lot of difficult topics in a very compelling way. We join Daniel Jones (Adam Driver, “BlacKkKlansman”) on his first day on the job, where Denis McDonough (Jon Hamm, “Bad Times at the El Royale”) tells Daniel to get experience in the intelligence community and wait until the Democrats get the Senate back. Daniel follows Denis’ advice, and under the direction of Senator Dianne Feinstein (Annette Bening, “Captain Marvel”) he begins to investigate why hundreds of hours of interrogation tapes had been destroyed. As Jones dives deeper, the documents he finds details things that are increasingly disturbing, and the further he searches, the more resistance he gets from the CIA.
I think the biggest problem this film has is pacing, and some of those pacing issues come from the way this film is structured. We’re shown Jones’ investigation process, and through his investigation of documents and emails, we begin to uncover the story of what really happened at GITMO. The way the film details both the torture and investigation of that torture tosses the viewer back and forth between timelines, and for a while, it works, but by the middle of the second act, I was starting to feel a bit fatigued. This is not a light subject. We’re talking about the torture of over a hundred-and-fifty people, and a two-hour movie about that subject is going to be heavy. I honestly wished this were twenty to thirty minutes shorter, because some of the scenes we were shown just felt like more of the same. At the same time, I understand that the director probably wanted us to feel fatigued by the end of the investigation, so, if that’s what he was going for, I suppose he nailed it. I, personally, think the film could’ve been tightened up a bit and we wouldn’t have lost much.
Verdict:
After I watched this film I sort of poked through Wikipedia pages to see how accurate the movie actually was, and from what I could tell, a fair portion of it was pretty close to life. As a movie, I think “The Report” is just fine, and I think that knowing about the atrocities that were perpetuated in the name of justice is more important than actually seeing this film, but, if you’re looking for a way to digest a lot of information about a rather disturbing subject, this is a pretty easy way to do that.
Review Written By: