The Report

For a political thriller, The Report is more sad than revelatory, more melancholy than cathartic. Jones's work was not entirely in vain. His revelations of a cover-up, though heavily doctored, eventually were made public.

The hackneyed script has the effect of lending an unmerited nobility to the politicians and bureaucrats on-screen.

Driver and Bening give detailed and thoughtful performances, and the film, though necessarily on the dry side, is riveting from start to finish.

Director Scott Z Burns captures the events in a cold, rigorously factual, and largely dispassionate manner. But that's the point.

The Report is a masterclass in how you build to a climax, especially when you can't rely on some big third-act action extravaganza.

The Report should piss you off. It should embarrass you. Maybe this time, we won't forget.

The Report is a love letter to the genre. [...] The viewer stands up from its comfortable cinema seat with a desperate thirst for truth. This means that the movie has pulled off its mission.

One can hope that by examining the flaws of The Report any aspiring screenwriters out there can understand why the number one rule of screenwriting is “show, don’t tell.”

This was a film with a powerful story to tell. It just was never quite sure how to tell it. Still, you should watch this film for the performances alone, and the story that is told has just enough thematic heft to get you.

“The Report” doesn't much acknowledge just how much racism played a role in what happened, but it also almost seems to seethe, in its own understated fashion, against giving ground to the argument of torture being a necessary evil.