Real-Life Procedural “She Said” Examines Unraveling of Weinstein

All of the spotlights and president’s men can’t make this story surprising again. Maria Schrader’s investigative journalist saga She Said (B-) is an imminently watchable but not terribly original drama about a pair of New York Times reporters sleuthing into the misconduct of movie producer Harvey Weinstein, whose character’s face is never visible in the frame. The film is buoyed by two effective central performances, Carey Mulligan as Meghan Twohey and Zoe Kazan as Jodi Kantor. Both women are courageous portrayals of strong working mothers on a quest to improve the lives of others through a cathartic chronicle. Others in the ensemble, except the outstanding Samantha Morton and Jennifer Ehle as compelling corporate sources, don’t make much of an impression. The combination of people playing themselves and cloaking the antagonist as basically an “over the shoulder” stand-in didn’t really work. There aren’t a lot of new bombshells in the screenplay, and the story doesn’t tell us a whole lot about the intrepid reporters; but the crafts are uniformly strong with a clean, glossy sheen to the proceedings. There are shots aplenty of peering through glass, so the viewers can feel like voyeurs to the procedural in minutia. The film is a strong teaching tool for future journalists and builds to the inevitable triumph setting the #MeToo movement into motion. For all the sensational scandal it breaks into the open, the approach is a bit tame.

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