The Report is based on a real Senate Intelligence Committee investigation into EIT, or enhanced interrogation techniques - a phrase we all know and one that is kindly considered the work of a marketing department on how best to sell torture given that people (and lawyers) generally have a problem with torture. It is unsurprisingly fairly blunt on the approach taken and how wrong it was. This approach makes it an important and worthy film, but also makes it a slightly lesser one.
By being so obviously outraged the film plays to the choir a bit too much (a choir that contains me, if it matters). This translates into a directness and obviousness that feels a bit too simplistic and by the numbers; this is not me suggesting that it needed to make excuses for those involved, however it could have been more nuanced with the journey and had the confidence that at the end of it the viewer would still recognise how wrong this was. In not doing this, the film is still interesting, but it feels lacking in conversation and world building, instead very much making its point. Of course for me I agree with the point, so I went with the film, but it is very on-the-nose with what it does and how it structures it. In terms of delivery though, it does do well to make the writing of a report and reading of documents to be dramatic. The cuts in time work well to put meat on the bones and helps to mix the political, ethical, and real life aspects of it
The cast is impressive in name and performance. Driver does the heavy lifting, but there is plenty of solid support from Hamm, Bening, Hall, Nelson, Levine, and others. Production values are solid throughout, and are part of it feeling like a serious, important film. It stands as such, and is a good dramatic read on a shameful period of recent history that is already mostly forgotten as it gets eclipsed by other shameful moments, and goes unmarked by the lack of consequences for those behind it. It is more important than engaging though, and could have been a stronger film for embracing the complexity more than it did.
