The Report tells the real story of senate staffer Daniel Jones and the Senate Intelligence Committee as they uncover the horrifying details about the CIA’s use of torture during the War on Terror. In 2012, Jones (Adam Driver) and his team created an over 6,000-page report that alleged that the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques were torture and resulted in no new information from prisoners. The report and its authors were faced with push back from the CIA and the White House as they tried to hide conclusions reached in the report.
When sitting down to watch The Report, I was expecting to see Spotlight crossed with Zero Dark Thirty, and in short, that is exactly what I got. First and foremost, The Report has all the pieces of an investigative journalism story like Spotlight. As we follow their investigation, we hear a healthy amount of the government jargon and acronyms that take a while to get used to and understand. Inter-cut throughout the film are flashbacks to 9/11 and the beginning of the War on Terror. Many of these flashbacks showed the torture of prisoners at CIA black sites. As the film progresses, the torture becomes more and more graphic, and yet it is never gratuitous. The flashbacks show how the prisoners where treated and emphasize why the work that Jones and his team is doing is so important.
Adam Driver gives a stellar performance as the leading man and further cements himself as an amazing actor who also happens to be in Star Wars and not the other way around. Annette Bening and Jon Hamm also give great supporting performances as Senator Dianne Feinstein and White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, but both are easily outshined by Adam Driver.
As with most films based on a true story, they are a Hollywood dramatization of the real-life events. The Report is no exception to this commonality; there is bound to be a bias, especially since there are politics involved. However, in comparison, The Report actually seems to have very little bias, as the film tries to focus on only the facts, even though some of them are exaggerated a little to make them more interesting for the big screen. One thing that stands out in the cinematography is how the flashback sequences are presented. In the flashbacks, there is a noticeable change in lighting and color of the film to give it a hazy or fuzzy look, to emphasize the political ambiguity of the recounting of past events and how they are swayed to favor certain people.
The Report gives an account of real-life events that is not dry and boring, and yet it isn’t a political thriller either. If you’re interested in what happened with the CIA and their use of torture during the War on Terror, but don’t want to read the dry Wikipedia page, then check out The Report and Adam Driver will tell you all about it.
3/5 STARS