Bombshell (2019)

Directed by Jay Roach. Starring Charlize Theron, Margot Robbie, Nicole Kidman, John Lithgow, Rob Delaney, Liv Hewson, Brigette Lundy-Paine, Kate McKinnon, Mark Duplass, Katie Aselton, Connie Britton, Allison Janney, Nazanin Boniadi, Stephen Root, Robin Weigert, Malcolm McDowell, Anne Ramsay, Mark Moses. [R]

Shallow but attention-grabbing exposé of the downfall of loathsome Fox News CEO Roger Ailes (Lithgow) after newscaster Gretchen Carlson (Kidman) sued him for sexual harassment, which slowly encouraged others to speak out and level similar accusations. The seamy subject matter and major performances create compelling angles, but it’s packaged like the average cable news story—a sensationalistic, button-pushing sales pitch, and while it may be easy to buy what’s being sold, fervor doesn’t always translate to provocative persuasion. Charles Randolph’s script makes little effort to give human dimensions to controversial public figures (nearly all of the supporting characters are presented as either institutional creeps or victims), and with so little insight into the dirty details and motivations for complicity, it hardly qualifies as a “bombshell”; it does, however, accomplish the difficult feat of assembling a wealth of material and presenting it all with pacy clarity, even at the cost of nuance and “fairness and balance.” In addition to the three leads delivering impressive work, the resemblance of the entire cast to their real-life counterparts is uncanny at times (Theron as Megyn Kelly, Kevin Dorff as Bill O’Reilly, etc.), distractingly off at other times (Richard Kind as Rudy Giuliani, Alanna Ubach as Jeanine Pirro, etc.). Oscar winner for its makeup and hairstyling.

67/100