Spotlight

Traditional print journalism has become marginalized amid the contemporary blogosphere, but films like Spotlight offer a reminder that good reporting should always have its place in the sensationalistic modern media landscape.

This taut and well acted ensemble drama is based on some true-life muckraking in 2002, when a team of journalists from the Boston Globe helped to expose a massive sex-abuse scandal in the Catholic church.

Such an investigation is a challenge in a city where Catholicism has been so ingrained in the fabric for generations that nobody wants to challenge its authority or believe any accusations of corruption. In fact, it’s up to an outsider in the form of the newspaper’s new executive editor (Liev Schreiber) to suggest the idea to the newspaper’s fledgling Spotlight investigative team, which needs a project to prove itself with cutbacks pending.

So the group’s editor, Robby (Michael Keaton), and reporters Mike (Mark Ruffalo), Sacha (Rachel McAdams), and Matt (Brian D’Arcy James) begin with a story of a single priest who allegedly molested young parishioners, and later find evidence of a cover-up in the form of payoffs to victimized families and a pattern of transferring priests instead of punishing them.

The journalists fight through legal and bureaucratic red tape and navigate an uneasy relationship with archdiocese leaders and the local judicial system, encountering more dead-ends than reliable leads as their deadline looms.

The screenplay by director Tom McCarthy (The Visitor) knows its way around a big-city newsroom, capturing the whirlwind of anxieties, personalities, pressure, and hustle and bustle. It chronicles the collaboration between writers and editors, and how a passion for the truth plays a role in their work.

Like the articles at its core, the film is well researched, and its perspective builds tension even for those who know the basics of the story, which isn’t difficult to piece together anyway. Yet it’s appropriately restrained and workmanlike at the same time. Even though the outcome isn’t in doubt, there’s still room for outrage.

Provocative if overly idealistic, Spotlight is a searing ethical study of priests, lawyers and reporters that conveys depth and moral complexity. More than anything, it celebrates the continuing vital role of solid objective journalism, and that’s worth a headline in itself.

Rated R, 128 minutes.