Amazon’s new film, The Report, should come with a warning. Its content can trigger an explosive combination of anger, sorrow and the teeth-grinding realization that the root of the state of our republic currently was planted when the U.S. government engaged in wholesale torture. Worse still, not one soul was ever prosecuted for it. More terrifying than that, the same “leaders” who oversaw our unlawful invasion of Iraq that resulted in the death of 4,000 American heroes and produced many who were tortured (that resulted in zero information that saved any lives) are living free. Those brutalized prisoners, meanwhile, had their lives were ruined, and one was even ended at the hand an American operative. It was stated at one point in The Report that several of those captured individuals “should never have been there.”
Adam Driver is Daniel J. Jones, a driven young man who was tapped by the Senate Intelligence Committee Chairperson, Senator Diane Feinstein (Annette Bening), to investigate the U.S. government’s role in employing so-called “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques,” specifically by the CIA. What was supposed to be a yearlong investigation, took over five years of Jones’ life. Met with resistance around every corner, The Report illustrates that although administrations change, when it came to the clandestine agency at the heart of this scandal, they live to fight and spy another day, without a single member being punished—even in the slightest.
There is so much that Jones discovers with his inquiry that the titular document was over 7,000 pages. Instead of being met with a thunderous shock and awe, the battle over even being able to release it at all, seemed to drain the Senate and the Executive Branch’s desire to achieve justice. More importantly, it isn’t front page news, so that one would hope that it never happens again. After inhaling the raw reality of The Report, I believe that it is highly likely that should we ever get attacked again, like a 9/11 attack, some folks at the CIA would believe a journey down the torture road once again would be fruitful.
Driver is sensational (when is he not, honestly?). His passion comes through on every frame for this part and one can tell that this storyline touches close to his heart. As a veteran and former member of our military, there are a few lines Driver delivers that are truly astounding. One, in particular, emotionally states his belief that the use of torture and the secrecy employed to cover it up would firmly come down hard on those members of the U.S. military that are sent into harm’s way. The fact that this country utilized torture could be a recruiting poster for those who wish us ill. Jones even states that any soldier that pulls out the Geneva Accords after being captured will be laughed at, and deservedly so.
Driver is one of the greatest thespians of his generation and that talent brings a certain amount of power when the subject matter hits close to home for him, as it does with The Report. Witnessing him embody this passionate American who completely changed his academic focus when the Twin Towers came crashing down is incredibly emblematic of how our so-called leaders hijacked our sense of horror, unity and collective will for justice. We should all be moved to do something about it after experiencing writer-director Scott Z. Burns’ work. That would be the greatest gift to our democracy that Jones’ sacrifice could produce.
Bening gives us a Senator Feinstein that is subtle and never gets worked up. That is firmly in the zone that the California politician has lived in her whole career. It takes a lot to get her to wear her emotions on her sleeve and as Bening portrays her, it is a gift to her legacy. The actress illustrates that as a politician, she has to straddle a line and be continuously aware of where that border lies. She has her constituents to think about. She has the welfare of a nation to consider. Above all else, the senator is not going to succumb to emotionally responses to stoic situations. She unleashes Jones on this mission to find the truth and hold those who violated our principles accountable. Yet, Bening showcases a leader whose understanding of the political realities and how it is ever evolving, is piercingly brilliant.
They say do what you love, and success follows. For Burns, his passion for the truth, even if its ugly, has always been a driving force for the writer. After all, he gave us the thriller Contagion and The Informant!—both wildly different but congruently searing looks at our government and how it responds to trouble. He makes his full length big screen directorial debut with The Report. There could not be a better filmmaker at the helm to craft an indictment of abuse of power and those that wield it. It especially eviscerates those who operate under the pretentious guise of protecting Americans and our way of life. They fail to grasp that their actions have achieved the exact opposite.
There is also a continual thread that emerged throughout The Report experience. The convoluted mess where our country currently resides could be traced back to how this affair was handled. It’s all there. From the partisan response to even looking into discovering the truth. Then, there’s the bombastic argument that each side has their own definition of the truth. Finally, there was a nationwide shrug of the shoulders reaction to a 7,000 page document that should have been met with armies of Americans protesting in the streets demanding a national course correction.
This writer has never let his political views enter the fray when it comes to reviewing the quality of a film. In this instance, I cannot sit idly by without making The Report about so much more than the powerful cinematic experience that it is. Senator Feinstein mentions the often mis-credited quote about history being written by the victors. Because our history was written as such, we all know what happened. Jones’ report got lost and here we are not too many years later with immigrant children being torn from their parents and placed in cages. We have American heroes who have served with dignity and honor, being deported because of a White House resident who puts his base’s passions above the most unique of concepts, i.e. what it means to be an American.
Now, my utter adoration of President Obama has always been front and center—I do not hide from it. But after watching The Report, there is a fair amount of blame to be placed on his administration’s shoulders for how his CIA was allowed to contradict the truths that Jones was unearthing. Senator Feinstein’s Intelligence Committee’s greatest asset was almost put in the same sentence as Edward Snowden. Yeah, that. Jones was a traitor? More like fully fledged American hero. But as Obama’s CIA director John Brennan (Ted Levine of Monk fame) operates the agency, Jones’ efforts were met with brick walls at the least and illegal use of powers at the most. Someone hacked into the Senate’s emails and the case is made that the order came from his office.
President Obama famously said that his election meant that America was ready to turn the page. He was not going to go after Cheney and George W. Bush for war crimes. In fact, he wasn’t even going to push for investigations into how their lies got us into the Iraq War. So, a full fledged inquiry into the CIA’s use of torture was not going to happen either. When a country can successfully operate outside the lines of the law, heck even what is humanistic, it is doomed to repeat that mentality in the future. That is exactly what Trump’s White House and the executive branch is doing and has been doing for three years. Obama could have stopped that.
As Obama White House insider Denis McDonough (Jon Hamm) explains to Jones and Feinstein at one point in Burns’ film, there was a certain amount of political capital that the president had when he took office. He chose to use it to get the economy going and inch it away from the brink of disaster where it teetered as 2008 became 2009. The subject again gets visited when there is a partisan battle over making The Report public. Republicans, do not want it to be read by a single American. Democrats vary with their opinion on that matter. But McDonough tells Jones that once again the White House won’t support his effort. Why? Because they are worried about the Republicans taking their ire on the issue out on him and his Affordable Care Act.
Sure, politics are messy, and games are played on both sides that keep our citizens from getting all they deserve. But as The Report shows, the biggest casualty of our current political landscape is the truth. We have fostered an environment where the truth is debatable. I’m sorry, but aren’t facts just that—facts! Our current leader lies dozens upon dozens of times a day. There seems to be no cost. Maybe, just maybe, those who surround him in the White House know that if there was no accountability for our undertaking of torture and the horrors that accompany it, then what’s a few lies told from the Oval Office to the campaign trail and everywhere in between? Without consequences, we deserve the horrorshow that now runs our government.
Perhaps next time, the American public shouldn’t shrug their collective shoulders at a scandal that should have toppled some careers. Instead, one of the folks in charge of that Enhanced Interrogation Techniques system, well … they got promoted to the head of the CIA.
Over the course of the two-hour film, there is a continual insult to our American way of life and our view of liberty. To think that all of that was just chucked right out the window in those days following 9/11. Sure, our leaders were scared. But what, specifically, Vice President Chaney did was inexcusable and yes, illegal. He should have been punished accordingly. As the late Senator John McCain says in one moment towards the end of the film, when we look at torture and ask the question about whether it works or not … the answer should never be about them, [i.e. our enemies]. The question and the answer requires that it always be about us.
We’re better than this … at least I used to think so.
Grade: A