Drama relies on tactics rather than honesty

Robert Redford doesn’t look or act much like former CBS News anchorman and 60 Minutes contributor Dan Rather. But that doesn’t matter much.

What matters, and what’s germane to the distressing inchoate quality of Truth, is that Rather comes off as a saintly, cardboard dullard in the new film by writer-director James Vanderbilt.

Even if you don’t know what’s missing — a hint, maybe, of the legendary Rather swagger — what’s there doesn’t compensate.

Top-billed Cate Blanchett tears into the role of hard-charging news producer Mary Mapes, a maligned scapegoat in the movie’s eyes.

In September 2004, on the brink of George W. Bush’s re-election, Rather led the on-air charge with a 60 Minutes segment produced by Mapes regarding discrepancies,

Directed by James Vanderbilt.

R (for language, a brief nude photo)

2:01

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vagaries and riddles about Bush’s Texas Air National Guard duty during the Vietnam War.

But key memos cited in the report drew charges of forgery. The story wasn’t persuasively verified. Crucial documents were framed on-air as authentic; they were not. After an on-air retraction and apology, Rather bowed out, and Mapes was fired.

But what if the story was essentially correct, the squishy evidence notwithstanding?

A good movie might be made from the unknown knowns of Truth.

Blanchett certainly commands the screen.

And the script adapts the Mapes memoir, Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power.

But the film seems dodgy, tentative and uncertain as to how to frame its protagonist.

As Mapes assembles her news crew (Dennis Quaid, Elisabeth Moss and Topher Grace), Truth becomes a story of leaked memos, followed by a fatal shortcut or two — followed by an hour’s worth of regrets, crises and fallout.

Vanderbilt honors Mapes and all she endured on the way up (she won a Peabody for her Abu Ghraib coverage) and then down. But he dishonors the tradition of the journalism movie by falling for every cheap emotional tactic in a book that should have gone out of print years ago.

The drama — the honest, telling details of the saga — would have been enough. As is, Truth doesn’t matter much.