Mining Riches from Rags: “Ink” Premieres at TIFF, Examines Tabloid Journalism

Danny Boyle’s Ink (B-) makes creating sensational journalism look a wee bit too sensational. Jack O’Connell stars as Larry Lamb, the editor recruited by Rupert Murdoch (Guy Pearce) in 1969 to reinvent a struggling British newspaper, turning tabloid The Sun into a populist must-read and helping rewrite the rules of the news business. Boyle attacks the story with locomotive speed, tilted angles and razzle-dazzle flourishes that make the newsroom revolution great fun to watch, but Ink never delivers the Wolf of Wall Street or Boogie Nights-style reckoning its men behaving badly deserve. Viewers familiar with media history will recognize an origin story for many of the excesses that have come to define the modern news landscape, but the film could be considerably clearer about the consequences of what its characters unleash. The extremely charismatic O’Connell and always reliable Pearce are both compelling, yet the dramatic weight between Lamb and Murdoch is often sidelined, robbing their relationship of some potentially combustible central tension. Claire Foy is terrific as a composite character intended to provide another perspective, but even she isn’t given enough leverage to become the foil the story needs. Ink has great style and seemingly honorable intentions as both history lesson and cautionary tale, but in all that breathless headline-making, Boyle buries his own lead.

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