Bombshell

Remember the good old days when an actor was portraying a real life figure and they just rocked up and played the part. No need for cutting edge prosthetics to create a facsimile of the person, they just did what they did best and us, the audience never questioned them at all. The magic of film was all we needed. No one cared if Bruce Davison didn't look a bit like JFK or Angela Bassett wasn't the spit of Tina Turner or Ben Kingsley wasn't Gandhi.........ok no, that last one was pretty uncanny. I miss those days. Now we get perfect recreations and it's kinda offputting instead of amazing.

2016. New York City. The Fox news headquarters. Roger Ailes (John Lithgow) is the boss and he's a bastard who treats the women beneath him like meat there to be ogled and hounded. His actions have effected dozens, if not hundreds of women. Among them Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman), the co-host of Fox & Friends who's had enough and wants payback; Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron), the newscaster who took on Trump and who has history with Ailes and Kayla Pospisil (Margot Robbie playing a composite of victims of Ailes), the up and coming star with her eyes on a tv spot. What happened to them and how they dealt with it shook the news industry to it's very core.

Bombshell is a fine film, and a very important one too being one of the first to directly deal with the fallout from the #MeToo movement. It makes no bones about who's to blame (rich, white, old, male) but at same time doesn't make saints of it's leading ladies. It's a stinging indictment of the way society turns women into commodities but it's also quick to point it's finger at people who look after number one first. Sadly it's good work is partly undone by it's need to recreate it's real life leads to a tee, a move that drags you out of the film instead of hooking you in. Instead of listening to and empathising with Megyn and Gretchen you'll find yourself looking at them and wondering at the make up effects on display. It's weird, almost like the uncanny valley effect you get with CGI recreations of humans and feels like showing off on the part of director Jay Roach, in a look what we can do kind of way. Just because you can do it doesn't mean you should do it.

Effects aside it's a very unsettling look into a toxic culture that has permeated every strata of industry but with TV it has been openly on display and tolerated by all of us. It's the kind of watch that will make you feel complicit, make you take notice the next time you watch the news or a chatshow. The way women on tv, talk, move, dress, everything carefully calibrated to sell news with sex appeal. It's about time people kicked back against the pricks to quote Johnny Cash. It's about time we realised just how hard life can be for the women around us. The flashback to Rudi Bakhtiar second guessing her every word in a conversation with her boss that takes a horrible turn. The skin crawling interview Kayla has with Ailes. The abuse Gretchen gets when she dares go on tv without her face on. The truth of Megyn's background with her boss. Stuff that women, no matter how big or little their job is have had to face from day dot.

Theron's the lead and she does mighty work but it's Robbie's Kayla that will stick in your mind. The fresh faced ingénue who rapidly realises how scummy her boss is. A phone call from her late in the movie is a heartbreaker. The true effect of the abuse of power and the aftermath of a cheap thrill. It's a pity Ailes didn't live to see this film released but I've a feeling a fucker like him would only scoff at the devastation he created. Lithgow's portrayal of him is very disquieting. Old, obese, decrepit, but still capable of shredding with a word or a look.What could have been pantomime becomes recognisably human and that's even more disturbing as a result. Disturbed. That's how you should feel when you leave the cinema after this. It's not a fun watch but it's a necessary one. If you can get past the prosthetics that is.

Out now everywhere.