Spotlight

“Spotlight” takes audiences back to the second half of 2001 when a daily newspaper like The Boston Globe had the power to expose a massive cover-up and help change the world. Internet journalism had not yet supplanted the printing press, and some reporters were allowed to spend time on research before publishing their findings.

When a new editor, Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) takes over the Globe, he meets a team of journalists known as “Spotlight,” led by Walter Robinson (Michael Keaton) who are accustomed to taking months to select a story, then additional months to cover it in depth. Marty asks the team to consider investigating whether a cover-up is taking place in the most highly respected institution in Boston: the Catholic Archdiocese.

Robinson and the Spotlight team accept the assignment, and they come up against ample opposition, because many people in Boston are very protective of their Church. More than one person points out to the Spotlight reporters, who all have Catholic backgrounds, that Marty Baron is Jewish, implying that he doesn’t care about them.

“Spotlight” contains very few surprises. You sense right away that the reporters are being painted as caring only about the truth, while the Catholic leaders and their lawyers are happy to keep protecting priests from the criminal consequences of hurting children. Though the movie proceeds predictably, it’s riveting to see the reporters getting consistently surprised by the depths of corruption they keep uncovering.

The film is based on actual events, so the filmmakers didn’t add sensational material, nor did they choose to show kids being molested. Instead, as if we’re on a jury, we hear testimony from grown-ups who have been physically and spiritually abused by priests they once considered, as they say, “Like God.”

Some might accuse the movie of painting the Catholic church in an extremely negative light. After seeing it, I don’t think I would ever trust a lone priest or other male spiritual leader to be alone around children.

As a follower of Jesus, it’s disheartening for me to see how some spiritual leaders have used their positions of power to exploit minors and aren’t stopped by their leaders—just sent to another town or given treatment as if they’re on “sick leave.”

I know that all kinds of churches have also dealt with evil men and women—not just Catholics. Though the newspaper reporters in this story weren’t acting on behalf of a particular church and seemingly left their own churches for the rest of their lives, I still saw them as doing God’s work to stop sexual predators and expose the system protecting them.

Several Christian adults I know keep away from any R-rated films. “Spotlight” is a film I’d still recommend for some, because of the importance of the subject matter. I tried not to let the profane language bother me. For the Boston characters, it seems almost akin to their dialect. I expected it.

I have written that the sex/nudity is “heavy” not because anything is shown, but because the past crimes that are recounted by adults from their childhood are described in some detail. What the priests did is “Extremely Offensive,” too, but thankfully the movie doesn’t present the subject matter in an exploitative way.

• Violence: None
• Swearwords: Heavy—f-words (6), s-words (24), “J*sus” (7), “Oh J**** Ch****,” “J*sus Chr*st,” “G*d-damn” (6), “Honest to G*d” (1), “h*ll” (5), “d*mn,” “a**,”, “a**-hole,”, “d*ck,”, “cr**” (2), “cr*ppy,” “son of a b*tch”
• Sex/Nudity: Heavy—talk of sexual abuse, oral sex and rape (but not extremely graphic)

See list of Relevant Issues—questions-and-answers.

• Positive
• Neutral