It’s such a rare thrill to see a smart, adult drama like The Report that I left its Sundance premiere on an adrenaline high as if I had just seen the latest Mission: Impossible movie, giddy from the ride I had just taken. What makes this so remarkable is that the film, an exhaustive retelling of the investigation into CIA’s post-9/11 “enhanced interrogation” practices, avoids forcing the facts into Hollywood formula, allowing us to simply bear witness as intelligent people discuss, argue and debate in government offices for two hours.
In crude terms, it might be viewed as a cross between Spotlight and The Post although I’d argue that it’s finer than both of those films, with its laser-tight focus resulting in an audacious unwillingness to entertain extraneous material. We spend the majority of the film with Daniel Jones (Adam Driver), a Senate staffer tasked with building a report on any potential abnormalities in how the CIA interrogated terror suspects after September 11. Dealing with Senator Dianne Feinstein (Annette Bening), he’s confronted with millions of documents that lead him on a six-year journey to prove major discrepancies and acts of extreme brutality.
The decision to restrict the film’s narrative to the job at hand, rather than say, following Jones home to see the toll his work is taking on his relationship etc, gives The Report a compelling singularity and one that might alienate some viewers. His character is developed via his actions in the workplace rather than his personal life, the point being that, well, Jones didn’t really have one during the time he wrote the report. As a viewer, we’re given a similarly no-nonsense retelling with a dense unveiling of information that requires absolute attention. The film starts on unsure footing with some distracting, on-the-nose dialogue and some all-too-rapid time-jumps but soon settles down, gripping us to our seats for the next two hours.
There are so, so, so many details being shared here yet writer and director Scott Z Burns, best known for collaborating with Steven Soderbergh on Contagion, Side Effects and The Informant!, has ingeniously constructed a film that manages to feel both strict and unsanitised yet utterly absorbing. His script is quite the feat, with brisk, tightly written dialogue filling every corner of every scene without it feeling as suffocating as a latter-day Sorkin might.
Part of this is down to his aforementioned avoidance of cliche, Burns aware that the factual basis of what happened is thrilling enough and for any viewer, like me, who has a fetish for competence porn (that’s watching hugely capable, incredibly smart people carry out difficult tasks with great aptitude), The Report is close to orgasmic. There are so many occasions, especially near the end, when another writer might be tempted to add some flash to a number of confrontations yet simply watching characters outsmart each other using facts or the tenets of the law is so much more satisfying than any added theatrics.
Fresh off his first Oscar nomination for BlackKklansman, Driver is a total natural with often difficult, demanding and intimidatingly wordy material. Like the script, he’s similarly unflashy and unquestionably convincing as a man doggedly following through with his convictions with so many of his info-stuffed monologues deserving quiet applause. It’s a restrained performance that he almost disappears into and acts as further proof of his versatility, dialling back the charm or confidence that might have typified many of his previous roles. As Feinstein, Bening is superb, nailing both her physicality and line delivery while avoiding any sort of broad caricature. It’s such a joy to see them act together, lightly sparring while reeling off Burns’s astute dialogue, and they’re matched by an adept supporting cast, including Jon Hamm, Maura Tierney, Corey Stoll and Michael C Hall.
There’s no heavy hand employed when dealing with the challenging subject matter and Burns also avoids letting anyone off the hook, placing blame for much of what happened and the fallout on both political parties. He flashes back to a number of unflinching torture scenes that are efficient and not exploitative and even finds time for a small dig at Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty.
The Report is an angry, urgent film that rarely raises its voice, smartly conveying inhumanity and injustice without unnecessary drama. I found it thrilling.
The Report is showing at the Sundance film festival and will be released later this year