Spotlight (2015)

"I know there's things you cannot tell people. But I also know there's a story here people will hear about it."

In 2001, The Boston Globe newspaper hires a new editor, Marty Baron (Schreiber).  One of the columnists at the Globe writes a piece about sexual abuse of children in the Catholic church.  Baron asks the Globe's Spotlight team to investigate.  Spotlight is a small group of tenacious reporters, led by Walter "Robby" Robinson (Keaton), who spend months doing in depth research on every subject prior to writing their official article.  The rest of the Spotlight team consists of investigative journalists Mike Rezendes (Ruffalo), Sacha Pfeiffer (McAdams), and Matt Carroll (d'Arcy James).

The team begin investigating the information from the column, beginning with lawyer Mitch Garabedian (Tucci).  Garabedian is reluctant to talk at first, but eventually opens up and allows them to set up interviews with some of his clients.  They also talk to Phil Saviano (Neal Huff), a victim and member of SNAP, an organization for other survivors.  Their investigations also lead to conversations with lawyer Eric MacLeish (Billy Crudup).  They can't talk about the case with anyone else, except Assistant Editor Ben Bradlee Jr. (Slattery) and Baron.  The deeper they dig, the bigger the case gets.  Can they get enough information to publish the article?


In 2003 the Boston Globe's Spotlight team were awarded the Pulitizer Prize for Public Service for their investigation of the child sex abuse in the Boston Catholic church.  The team began reporting the story in 2002, and their coverage led to convictions of the offenders.  It also caused more victims to come forward.

In 2013, Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer wrote a screenplay based on the Spotlight team's investigation.  Their story focused on the reporters and the work they put into uncovering the truth.  The screenplay was included in the 2013 Black List of unproduced screenplays.  A year later they began filming, with McCarthy as the director.

The cast is excellent, and work well as a unit.  The main cast all get more or less the same amount of screen time, and there is no weak link.  The cast members met with the people they portray, and most were on set to help the filmmakers get the right feel for each character and their work space.  All their work pays off.

The film was nominated for 6 Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Mark Ruffalo), Best Supporting Actress (Rachel McAdams), Best Original Screenplay, and Best Film Editing.  It won Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay.

It is a fascinating film and worthy of all the accolades it received.

Spotlight (2015) 129 minutes
Rating: R for some language including sexual references
Director: Tom McCarthy
Starring: Mark Ruffalo as Mike Rezendes
Michael Keaton as Walter "Robby" Robinson
Rachel McAdams as Sacha Pfeiffer
Liev Schreiber as Marty Baron
John Slattery as Ben Bradlee Jr.
Brian d'Arcy James as Matt Carroll
Stanley Tucci as Mitchell Garabedian