THE REPORT
****
Director: Scott Z. Burns
Screenwriter: Scott Z. Burns
Principal cast:
Adam Driver
Annette Bening
Jon Hamm
Corey Stoll
Michael C. Hall
Maura Tierney
Country: USA
Classification: M
Runtime: 119 mins.
Australian release date: 14 November 2019
Previewed at: Sony Pictures Theatrette, Sydney, on 23 September 2019.
The decimation of the Twin Towers in NYC on September 11, 2001, changed the face of global politics and, 18 years later, the battle is still being fought, both on the world stage and domestically in the USA. The Report, directed and written by Scott Z. Burns, is a thorough examination of the investigation into the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program that was created in the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy. Coming hard on the heels of The Looming Tower, which covered some of the same ground and was seen on SBS Television recently, these releases alone are a stark reminder that ‘Truth Matters’, as The Report’s poster declaims, even in this age of “Truthiness” (thank you Stephen Colbert).
The poster also tells us that the movie might have been called The Torture Report, with the word Torture crossed out, which reveals much about the subject of the film. Senator Diane Feinstein (an inspired performance by Annette Bening) was the chair of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence between 2009 and 2015 when the Committee voted to open an investigation into the CIA after it emerged that it had been destroying videotapes of the ‘enhanced interrogation’ (meaning waterboarding) of terrorism suspects. She appointed an ex-FBI investigator to head up the inquiry, Daniel J. Jones (a driven {ahem!} Adam Driver), and he and his team spent the next three years going through millions of pages of documents trying to get to the truth of the matter. The CIA swamped them with material hoping that the task would be overwhelming but this was only the first of many dirty tricks that the Agency employed to supress Jones’ report. Later, it hacked into the Senate Committee’s computer network and removed hundreds of documents, commissioned its own review then accused Jones of stealing it and, ultimately, demanded that all names and places be redacted before the release of the final version. In other words, the CIA fought tooth-and-nail to stop ‘the torture report’ ever seeing the light of day - with good reason. When it released its 20 findings, all were highly damning of the Agency. Principally, it found that ‘enhanced interrogation’ was ineffective and couldn’t be relied upon and that their Detention and Interrogation Program had damaged the USA’s reputation internationally.
The Report opens on a shot of a forbidding, windowless room in the basement of a secure CIA building whose walls are entirely covered in Post-It notes, photos and documents, giving us a snapshot of the complexity of the job at hand. From there, we go back in time to cover the story of how we arrived at this point. Be advised, the film uses lots of acronyms and abbreviations that it assumes the audience will recognise and the plot covers the years 2003 to 2104, so it requires close attention. Driver is excellent in a non-showy role; Jones was a behind-the-scenes operator, dogged in his thorough approach to his job but a man who played by the rules. There are no big action scenes here, reflecting the shadowy world in which the events took place. Bening is terrific, looking and sounding like the real Feinstein, who has been a fixture in the US political environment for many decades. Her wigs, make-up and clothes are meticulous in conveying the truth of her character.
Burns has done a great job of bringing the complicated story of The Report to life but he could have amped up the tension a bit more. Admittedly, that’s not an easy ask when your material largely consists of people conducting research into documents and emails in enclosed rooms. The result is a film of great interest to political junkies but one that the wider public might wrestle with. The great irony of the Senate Committee’s investigation and the film, too, is that they could only be the products of a truly democratic country. They’re the sorts of things that the current Australian government would be trying its best to suppress.
Screenwriter: Scott Z. Burns
Principal cast:
Adam Driver
Annette Bening
Jon Hamm
Corey Stoll
Michael C. Hall
Maura Tierney
Country: USA
Classification: M
Runtime: 119 mins.
Australian release date: 14 November 2019
Previewed at: Sony Pictures Theatrette, Sydney, on 23 September 2019.
The decimation of the Twin Towers in NYC on September 11, 2001, changed the face of global politics and, 18 years later, the battle is still being fought, both on the world stage and domestically in the USA. The Report, directed and written by Scott Z. Burns, is a thorough examination of the investigation into the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program that was created in the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy. Coming hard on the heels of The Looming Tower, which covered some of the same ground and was seen on SBS Television recently, these releases alone are a stark reminder that ‘Truth Matters’, as The Report’s poster declaims, even in this age of “Truthiness” (thank you Stephen Colbert).
The poster also tells us that the movie might have been called The Torture Report, with the word Torture crossed out, which reveals much about the subject of the film. Senator Diane Feinstein (an inspired performance by Annette Bening) was the chair of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence between 2009 and 2015 when the Committee voted to open an investigation into the CIA after it emerged that it had been destroying videotapes of the ‘enhanced interrogation’ (meaning waterboarding) of terrorism suspects. She appointed an ex-FBI investigator to head up the inquiry, Daniel J. Jones (a driven {ahem!} Adam Driver), and he and his team spent the next three years going through millions of pages of documents trying to get to the truth of the matter. The CIA swamped them with material hoping that the task would be overwhelming but this was only the first of many dirty tricks that the Agency employed to supress Jones’ report. Later, it hacked into the Senate Committee’s computer network and removed hundreds of documents, commissioned its own review then accused Jones of stealing it and, ultimately, demanded that all names and places be redacted before the release of the final version. In other words, the CIA fought tooth-and-nail to stop ‘the torture report’ ever seeing the light of day - with good reason. When it released its 20 findings, all were highly damning of the Agency. Principally, it found that ‘enhanced interrogation’ was ineffective and couldn’t be relied upon and that their Detention and Interrogation Program had damaged the USA’s reputation internationally.
The Report opens on a shot of a forbidding, windowless room in the basement of a secure CIA building whose walls are entirely covered in Post-It notes, photos and documents, giving us a snapshot of the complexity of the job at hand. From there, we go back in time to cover the story of how we arrived at this point. Be advised, the film uses lots of acronyms and abbreviations that it assumes the audience will recognise and the plot covers the years 2003 to 2104, so it requires close attention. Driver is excellent in a non-showy role; Jones was a behind-the-scenes operator, dogged in his thorough approach to his job but a man who played by the rules. There are no big action scenes here, reflecting the shadowy world in which the events took place. Bening is terrific, looking and sounding like the real Feinstein, who has been a fixture in the US political environment for many decades. Her wigs, make-up and clothes are meticulous in conveying the truth of her character.
Burns has done a great job of bringing the complicated story of The Report to life but he could have amped up the tension a bit more. Admittedly, that’s not an easy ask when your material largely consists of people conducting research into documents and emails in enclosed rooms. The result is a film of great interest to political junkies but one that the wider public might wrestle with. The great irony of the Senate Committee’s investigation and the film, too, is that they could only be the products of a truly democratic country. They’re the sorts of things that the current Australian government would be trying its best to suppress.
