Three stars. Rated R, for profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.30.15
This film is quite intriguing, in
part because its title reflects great irony: Almost no “truth” emerges here.
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| Having finally put their investigation to bed, the 60 Minutes team — from left, Lucy Scott (Elisabeth Moss), Mary Mapes (Cate Blanchett), Mike Smith (Topher Grace) and Lt. Col. Roger Charles (Dennis Quaid) — watch their colleague Dan Rather deliver the story to TV viewers. Sadly, that won't be the end of it... |
Director/scripter James
Vanderbilt’s politically charged drama is based on the late 2004 events that
later came to be known as “Rathergate”: the CBS 60 Minutes news piece that
cast doubt on the details of then-president George W. Bush’s National Guard
service.
The questions that initially
fueled the journalistic investigation — whether strings had been pulled to get
Bush into the Texas Air National Guard, as opposed to service in Vietnam; and
whether he had, in fact, honorably completed said National Guard service —
quickly were submerged beneath a rising tide of questions regarding the
legitimacy of the investigation’s sources and “smoking-gun documentation.”
This script is based on Truth
and Duty: The Press, the President and the Privilege of Power, the 2005 book
by Mary Mapes, who produced the CBS News piece, but Vanderbilt is an unlikely
candidate for such an assignment. His previous résumé is limited to crime dramas
and high-octane action epics such as The Amazing Spider-Man and White House Down, and his dialog here too frequently sounds like amateur efforts to
imitate Aaron Sorkin or David Mamet.
The performances are robust, and
Vanderbilt has done reasonably well with this directing debut; he knows how to
guide his actors through their scenes. No question, as well, that this is an
important story, and one with lessons to be learned. But the narrative is frequently
clumsy, the timeline occasionally confusing, and we’re ultimately left with
more questions than answers (which, although almost certainly intentional, is
nonetheless irritating).
On top of which, Vanderbilt makes
a few glaring rookie mistakes, starting with his opening scene, wherein Mapes
(Cate Blanchett) begins an intense first meeting with ... somebody. We’re
inclined to assume he’s a shrink; we eventually learn, much later, that he’s a
lawyer. Either way, he’s a gimmick that allows Mapes to recount her story while it’s still happening, which is simply daft.
The narrative proper begins in
the spring of 2004, just as CBS broadcasts Mapes’ breaking-news story of the
Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse. It’s a moment of triumph — and a piece
that would go on to win CBS and Mapes a Peabody Award — but, in the demanding
environment of a news studio, just another assignment completed, with many more
to go.
As it happens, Mapes has been
poking around the details of Bush’s National Guard service for several years,
with little to show for it. She pitches this potential exposé to Josh Howard
(David Lyons), executive producer of Wednesday evening’s 60 Minutes II, and
senior broadcast producer Mary Murphy (Natalie Saleeba); they encourage her to
assemble a team to dig out the story — if indeed there is a story — once and
for all.
Mapes hand-picks her
investigative associates: Lt. Col. Roger Charles (Dennis Quaid), a military
consultant who worked with her on the Abu Ghraib story; Mike Smith (Topher
Grace), a Texas-based freelancer with a flair for chasing down hot tips; and
Lucy Scott (Elisabeth Moss), a Dallas journalism professor and tireless researcher.
And, of course, Dan Rather
(Robert Redford), who has worked with Mapes for years, and who trusts both her
instincts and her integrity.
The enticing “hook” isn’t merely
that Bush might have used family connections to avoid the Vietnam War draft,
but also the possibility that he may have been guilty of dereliction of duty
while in the National Guard. The big break arrives when Mapes is handed half a
dozen previously unseen memos by former Texas Army National Guard Lt. Col. Bill
Burkett (Stacy Keach): memos signed by L. Col. Jerry B. Killian, the deceased
commanding officer of the 111th Fighter Intercept Squadron during Bush’s
supposed time there.
The physically ailing Burkett
seems a strange source for such material: a detail that we viewers grasp
immediately — in part with the benefit of hindsight, but also due to the
delicate nuances of Keach’s performance — but which seems lost on Mapes and her
colleagues. And while efforts are made to vet and double-source the memos’
relevant contents, during the subsequent weeks, the documents themselves seem,
well, rather fishy.
In part because of the
insufferably arbitrary nature of network scheduling, Mapes and her team wind up
rushing the story to meet an earlier-than-expected broadcast window.
And then all hell breaks loose,
the precise nature of which won’t be revealed here, because it’s fascinating
for the way in which everything turns to merde.
Although Vanderbilt’s script
pulls no punches with respect to the blindingly obvious investigative mistakes
and oversights, we’re nonetheless encouraged to believe — based in great part
on Blanchett’s alternately earnest and anguished performance — that these
errors resulted mostly from the ill-advised rush to judgment, as opposed to
partisan bias, or a nefarious effort to derail Bush’s chances for re-election,
or a deliberate attempt to fabricate a response to the swift-boating smear
campaign against Democratic challenger John Kerry.
How you feel about such a
reading, in a film of this nature, likely depends on where you fall in the
red/blue divide. Journalists make mistakes; depending on the severity of the
transgression, they apologize and move on. It’s hard not to smell
behind-the-scenes skullduggery — articulated so wonderfully, in one scene, by
Grace’s ultra-liberal Mike Smith — given how many warm bodies subsequently are
thrown under CBS’ corporate bus.
On the other hand, perhaps the
“mistakes” are serious enough that such punishment is warranted. Folks will
debate that one until the cows come home.
Blanchett plays Mapes with a
nobility of purpose: a reading that perfectly suits this actress. We fondly
recall Blanchett’s long list of strong-willed and virtuous real-life women,
from Queen Elizabeth I to Katharine Hepburn and Veronica Guerin. Blanchett’s performance
is powerful, nuanced and by far this film’s strongest asset: a good thing,
since she’s in almost every scene.
Initially assured, energetic and
absolutely on top of her game, we watch, utterly fascinated, as Mapes crumbles
before our eyes: as persuasive a descent into beaten, insecure helplessness as
her Academy Award-winning work in 2013’s Blue Jasmine.
Mapes’ final emotional
destruction, during a brief telephone conversation with her father, is
heartbreaking.
That said, Vanderbilt lards Mapes’
initial nobility a bit too thick, during scenes with her devoted husband (John
Benjamin Hickey, in a quiet but nicely sincere performance) and their
precocious 7-year-old son (Connor Burke). We get it, we get it: She’s the
perfect superwoman.
She’s also the only character who
seems to have a home life. Charles and Smith are never seen outside the office
— until a fleeting (but droll) exchange at the end — and Scott is granted no
more that two eyeblink scenes in her Dallas classroom. It becomes difficult to
see this film as anything but a valentine to Mary Mapes.
That said, Redford delivers a
disarmingly shaded performance, initially looking and sounding nothing like Dan
Rather ... until, suddenly, he does. We ultimately grieve for this man: a
much-decorated and invaluable face of American news, now destined to be
remembered solely for a single (if quite large) error in judgment.
Blanchett’s ferocity
notwithstanding, other cast members snatch some grand moments. Noni Hazlehurst
is terrific as Burkett’s protective wife, particularly when she coldly scolds
Mapes and her team for their self-serving callousness. And while Smith’s
aforementioned tirade wouldn’t occur in real life — we’re never that
passionately eloquent, during times of righteous indignation — Grace makes it a
cathartic “movie moment.”
Dermot Mulroney also gets in some
great verbal shots as Lawrence Lanpher, the condescending leader of the
subsequent investigation into Mapes’ “behavior” while she shaped the doomed
news story.
Concluding text blocks tell us
what became of Mapes and Rather, but we get no closure regarding the initial questions
that fueled their investigation. Details regarding Bush’s Texas Air National
Guard service remain murky, and in dispute, to this day ... which, frankly, is
a bit chilling.
Truth therefore is a story
without an ending. I’ll grant Vanderbilt’s earnest intentions, but the results are
... well ... unsatisfying. Even so, this film is an intriguing bookend for
Redford, who made such a splash in the similarly themed — but far more engaging
— All the President’s Men so many years ago.
That’s the way I’d prefer to
remember America’s hard-working journalists: as heroes, not sloppy buffoons.
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