Bombshell shines a Spotlight on Fox
Bombshell (M, 109 mins) Directed by Jay Roach Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ★★★1⁄2
It might say a lot, in a film heavy with portentous and explicatory dialogue, that the two most indelible and potent scenes in Bombshell are nearly wordless.
One is a simple ride in an elevator, shared by the three women at the film’s heart, none of whom know the others are involved in their narrative.
The other is a grisly demonstration of corrupt power, as a media tycoon insists – with nothing but grunting and heavy breathing – that a young woman journalist show him her legs to the very top of her thighs, because she is working ‘‘in a visual medium’’.
Bombshell is the story of the eventual and overdue fall of Roger Ailes. Ailes was the man who convinced Rupert Murdoch that his new Fox ‘‘news’’ channel should abandon all pretence of impartiality and instead be a nakedly Conservative and Right-wing platform. Ailes’ ‘‘logic’’ was that all the other news channels were liberal, so a Conservative voice would provide balance.
The thought apparently never made it into his reptilian brain that the other news channels had done their research and were mostly staffed by essentially decent people. The combination of which tends to produce people we think of as ‘‘liberal’’. Or, at least, ‘‘not d...s’’.
Fox, naturally, was a thunderous success. It succeeded in dividing the American voting populace like never before, merrily pollinating every story that crossed its path with a mixture of speculation, xenophobia, bigotry and misogyny that more-or-less reflected Ailes’ own loathsome personality.
And then the bomb dropped. One of Fox’s star anchors, Gretchen Carlson, came forward with a claim of sexual harassment against Ailes. Around the same time, fellow co-star Megyn Kelly was egregiously insulted by wannabe-presidential candidate Trump. Both stories blew up across the national and international media.
That Ailes was a sexual predator who had been operating in plain sight for years was an open secret at
Charlize Theron in particular, as the morally compromised Kelly, is astonishing.
Fox. The station’s contracts forbade any employee from suing the company. However, there was nothing to prevent Carlson from suing Ailes personally. Bombshell is the story of what happened next, as Carlson and her lawyers anxiously bet on other Fox women – Kelly especially – coming forward with their own stories to tell.
As the three women at the heart of Bombshell, Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theron and Margot Robbie deliver exactly the gold-plated performances you might expect of that dream casting. Theron in particular, as the morally compromised Kelly, is astonishing. That Academy Award nod is well deserved and I’ll be surprised if she is not the favourite to win.
I’m a little disappointed John Lithgow didn’t get the nod for his no-safety-net work as Ailes. What lets Bombshell down, a little, is the very straightforward plod through the known facts that director Jay Roach (Trumbo) and writer Charles Randolph choose to take.
Bombshell also occasionally flails as it seeks to remind us that the victims here were also people who had routinely used their own vast platforms and influence to attack the weak and vulnerable and to turn America against members of its own citizenry.
Bombshell is an extraordinarily well acted and more than competently made film. But it misses by miles the raw engagement and visceral gut punch of, say, Spotlight, a film which – I’m picking – the makers of Bombshell would have liked very much to emulate.