Spotlight(2015)

Genre: Drama/ History

Review by Mehnaaz Patel

I watched spotlight because of a friend's recommendation as I usually don't watch much from the drama genre, and the first word that comes to my mind after watching spotlight is engaging. The movie revolves around a team of investigative reporters from Spotlight, a part of the Boston Globe newspaper who start investigating a child abuse case done by a Catholic priest after the arrival of a new editor of the paper.

At first, I couldn't find the link between the two officers talking about a priest abusing children then them letting the priest go spot free and a new editor entering the Boston globe newspaper. But as the movie was progressing forward everything started linking together. When the spotlight team started investigating and finding horrifying facts like there were more than 80 priests who abused children in Boston, it felt like I was also part of that team uncovering horrendous facts. A baffling point in the movie is when Sacha (Rachel McAdams) visits an accused priest who admits that he and the victims were just having fun and the priest has also been abused by another priest.

The movie is very simplistic, nothing that is on a grand scale and it still makes one engaged. The story is slow paced but it is exactly what it needs, if it was fast paced then it would have been ruined. Every single actor in this movie did a great job and played their roles to perfection. The last scene perfectly ties up the whole story. It is the start of a long battle one which will take time and patience.

A beautiful thing that I learnt from the movie is that sometimes it takes an outsider to cleanse our home (it takes an outsider, the editor who just came to Boston to bring justice to the abused victims) and the people who were actually living their helped the priests cover up their crimes.