Advertisement
Powered By
IMDB

Review

A star rating of 4 out of 5.

Washington DC's corridors of power transfix US film-makers. Since Watergate, the western cliché of the principled sheriff's deputy has been succeeded by the tireless, coffee-slurping journalist - or, in another true-story drama from Scott Z Burns (The Laundromat), Senate researcher Dan Jones (Adam Driver). The idealistic staffer is tasked by Senator Dianne Feinstein (Annette Bening) with exposing the ineffectiveness of the CIA's "extreme interrogation techniques" - waterboarding, humiliation, ear-bleeding rock music - during America's post-9/11 panic, when George W Bush vouched that torture was not being used. (The interrogation scenes are impressionistically couched but still deeply shocking.) Jones's relentless basement-bound quest drags on into the second Obama administration and runs to 6,000 pages, graphically punctuated by on-screen flashes of key words and redaction blocks. (The film's title card is The Torture Report, with the middle word blacked out.) A fine cast of familiar faces (Matthew Rhys, Corey Stoll, Douglas Hodge) is headed by Jon Hamm (as Chief of Staff Denis McDonough) and Ted Levine (as CIA director John Brennan). But it's Driver's unshowy triumph, his character's doggedness cutting through the verbiage and obstruction. Mesmerising.

How to watch

Loading

Streaming

Credits

Cast

rolename
Daniel JonesAdam Driver
Senator Dianne FeinsteinAnnette Bening
Denis McDonoughJon Hamm
John BrennanTed Levine
Thomas EastmanMichael C Hall
Raymond NathanTim Blake Nelson
Cyrus CliffordCorey Stoll
BernadetteMaura Tierney
Caroline KrassJennifer Morrison
James MitchellDouglas Hodge
<em>New York Times</em> reporterMatthew Rhys
Scrubbed CIA officerBen McKenzie
Senator Mark UdallScott Shepherd
Senator Jay RockefellerVictor Slezak

Crew

rolename
DirectorScott Z Burns

Details

Theatrical distributor
Curzon
Released on
2019-11-15
Languages
English
Guidance
Violence, swearing
Formats
Colour
Advertisement
Advertisement

RadioTimes.com is getting better.

Fresh new look, redesigned programme hub, richer content…

FIND OUT MORE
Advertisement