As investigative thrillers go this was a real dud. Why do writers think journalists should be the centre of a story? The conceit of writers focusing on writers is bare faced. For a nearly three hour long film it has precious little actual story, and a jumbled narrative in which a lot of what is going on makes no sense whatever.
I really could go on and on with these sorts of unanswered questions.
But the big problem as I see it, is that the REAL story here should have been about Bergman's deposition in Mississippi. Because it is that and the ensuing events that resulted in the multi billion dollar damages paid by Big Tobacco. Even if it wanted to be a story about crusading journalists (like All the President's Men), and it isn't because the journalists at the centre of the story drop the ball, and their principles, completely, only a media fixated individual would hang around to watch nearly 3 hours of journalists making phone calls or shouting with producers and lawyers.
Short version: the media is almost never the story.
While I'm here, the principal actors are first rate in this. Pity the material didn't deserve it.
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Reply by tmdb53400018
on September 30, 2020 at 12:50 PM
I don't know, Jacinto, maybe they were inspired by the film and comicbook Superman? But seriously, some people believe that writers should stick to what they know something about from first-hand experience. Personally, I am not a hardcore adherent to this idea, but it has been rather helpful to me. And so you can start to see why some writers focus on writers in their writing. Ha.
Reply by Jacinto Cupboard
on September 30, 2020 at 10:24 PM
Part of the problem with that idea today is that many journalists and authors come straight out of Journalism, Communications, and Creative Writing courses and don't really know 'other lives'. I don't want this to go down the rabbit hole of 'coastal elites' or 'the culture wars'; my only real concern here is the effect that has on honest and good writing.
What we have here is writers (and actors and directors) with shelves full of statues and banks bursting with cash, putting a chemistry teacher in one the world's premier hotels and assuming that is so normal it doesn't require explanation.
The story wanted to be framed as some kind of David and Goliath struggle. The truth is that it was about one of America's largest companies, CBS, going after a relatively small tobacco subsidiary in Brown and Williamson. That was probably a deserved take down. The inclusion of part of Wigand's story doesn't shift this core narrative, particularly when it was done so faithlessly.
They told the wrong story. And probably because of the media's often masturbatory obsession with its own process.