Directed by Thomas McCarthy (The Cobbler, Win Win) and starring Mark Ruffalo (Foxcatcher, Infinitely Polar Bear, The Kids Are All Right, Shutter Island, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Now You See Me, Begin Again), Rachel McAdams (Sherlock Holmes, Red Eye, Midnight in Paris, About Time, The Time Traveller's Wife), Michael Keaton (Beetlejuice, Birdman, Batman, Jack Frost), Liev Schreiber (The Manchurian Candidate, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Pawn Sacrifice, The Last Days on Mars) and Stanley Tucci (The Lovely Bones, The Hunger Games, The Devil Wears Prada, Peter & Wendy, The Fifth Estate).
Drama, 128 mins, 12+, in English.
A riveting drama reliving the investigative reporters on the Spotlight team at The Boston Globe who uncovered the child abuse scandal in the Boston, Massachusetts, Archdiocese of the Catholic Church.
Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) joins the Boston Globe and guides the Spotlight team led by Walter 'Robby' Robinson (Michael Keaton) from touching of one story of child abouse committed by a priest, to discovering 7, then 13 cases, until they discover the figure is, in fact, much higher. While Marty Baron persuades them that the angle of the story should be that of the system breaking down and that people at the top would most likely have known about what was happening.
On the ground, Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) and Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams) do most of the sleuthing and research, following leads and battling against the closed-door approach and the hold that the institution of the Catholic Church has over the city and society. They do get breaks, but they also are frustrated that, even though certain documents are legally in the public domain, various individuals do not want to do anything that may be detrimental to the image and name of the Catholic Church.
They come across Mitchell Garabedian (Stanley Tucci) and Eric Macleish, lawyers who are representing some of the victims, but are their motives and methods the same?
The storyline follows the rollercoaster ride that experiences both peaks and troughs of the investigation. It deals with the difficult subject as delicately as it could, but without glossing over the terrible nature of the crimes and the way they have affected the victims. But this is not about the victims or those carrying out the crimes, but are about the investigative journalists themselves and the publication for which they work.
