Theron dazzles in ‘Bombshell’
Actress plays anchor Megyn Kelly in drama.
Charlize Theron won an Academy Award for playing a serial killer in “Monster,” and she’s just as complex as a well-known cable news journalist.
It’s another complete and uncanny transformation for Theron, who dazzles as anchor Megyn Kelly in the all-star drama “Bombshell” (★★★☆; rated R; in theaters Friday in New York and Los Angeles, nationwide Dec. 20), about the women who spoke out against a culture of rampant misogyny and harassment to topple Fox News CEO Roger Ailes.
Thanks to Oscar-winning makeup artist Kazuhiro Tsuji, who turned Gary Oldman into Winston Churchill for “Darkest Hour,” facial prosthetics help to match Kelly’s look while Theron definitely did her homework on the celebrity journalist’s diction. But most stellar is the way she inhabits the complexities of a woman who has benefited in part from the competitive, male-centric work environment she now has to tackle.
While uneven at times, the film is similarly sharp and savvy as director Jay Roach’s other political fare, “Game Change” and “Recount.” And with a somewhat satirical and over-the-top streak akin to last year’s “Vice,” “Bombshell” elucidates both the fall of a powerful creepazoid but more importantly the rising of female moxie.
“This place is crazy,” producer Jess Carr (Kate McKinnon), a closeted lesbian and liberal, tells fresh-faced employee Kayla Pospisil (Margot Robbie) with total understatement about the atmosphere at conservative Fox News. Women
are played against each other to get ahead and Ailes (John Lithgow) is more concerned about displaying his employees’ gams and other physical assets than being “fair and balanced.”
Kayla is an evangelical millennial and is central to one of three intertwining subplots. However, the real focal point is Kelly, who begins a public feud with presidential candidate Donald Trump at a 2015 Republican debate.
While she deals with online vitriol that hits way too close to home, her colleague Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) is fired and sues Ailes for sexual harassment, which throws the already tumultuous Fox newsroom into divisive chaos. Kelly has complicated feelings when it comes to Ailes, who has both mentored and harassed her.
Written by Charles Randolph (“The Big Short”) “Bombshell” covers similar ground to Showtime’s miniseries “The Loudest Voice,” which stars Russell Crowe as Ailes, though the story is told from the women’s perspective.
A zealot for the conservative cause, Robbie’s character witnesses firsthand what extreme lengths she has to go to make Ailes happy.
Lithgow solidly nails the unpleasant Ailes, who berates Carlson while he raids the doughnut table and has women spin around in his office to see if they’re (in his eyes) ready for a primetime spot. In “Bombshell,” the male gaze is played as an unnerving and everyday aspect of work life.
There’s a masterful sequence later in the movie where Kayla confronts Kelly about her silence about past abuses. It’s an emotional subtext only touched on fleetingly in “Bombshell” yet begs to be explored more throughout a film otherwise good at blowing up the patriarchy.