The Report – first look review

On the face of it, the prospect of a polit­i­cal dra­ma about the US Senate’s inves­ti­ga­tion into the CIA’s ​‘Enhanced Inter­ro­ga­tion Tech­niques’ post ⁹⁄₁₁ is a pret­ty hard sell. It’s high­ly for­tu­nate, then, that the mate­r­i­al is skil­ful­ly han­dled by writer/​director Scott Z Burns, who has been qui­et­ly on form for years as the man behind the scripts for Steven Soderbergh’s The Infor­mant!, Con­ta­gion, Side Effects and forth­com­ing The Laundromat.

While Aaron Sorkin’s polit­i­cal scripts are motor-mouthed walk­ing-and-talk­ing affairs, and Adam McK­ay favours bom­bas­tic fin­ger-jab­bing, there’s some­thing far more sub­tle at play in Burns’ film. The focus of the sto­ry is Sen­ate staffer Dan Jones (Adam Dri­ver), who’s charged with com­pil­ing a report on the CIA’s oper­a­tions regard­ing ter­ror sus­pects in the wake of ⁹⁄₁₁. His search for the truth is hin­dered by the tricky machi­na­tions of pow­er at the high­est lev­el, and his frus­tra­tions become more pro­nounced as months turn into years with no guar­an­tee the truth will ever see the light of day.

It’s an inter­est­ing role for Dri­ver, as Jones is a qui­et, thought­ful, large­ly unknown fig­ure. Burns doesn’t paint Jones as some cru­sad­ing all-Amer­i­can hero – he’s just a man doing his job, and doing it excep­tion­al­ly well. It’s tes­ta­ment to Driver’s tal­ent and ver­sa­til­i­ty that he’s able to deliv­er jargon‑y mono­logues and make it all so engag­ing – this could eas­i­ly have been dense and inac­ces­si­ble, but Dri­ver keeps it acces­si­ble and engross­ing. Mean­while Annette Ben­ing pro­vides the per­fect foil as Jones’ boss, Sen­a­tor Fein­stein, who sup­ports him while nav­i­gat­ing the tricky rela­tion­ship between the gov­ern­ment, CIA and FBI.

Burns also takes a swing at the media out­lets that com­ply with rather than ques­tion those in pow­er, direct­ly allud­ing to Zero Dark Thir­ty and 24 as pro­pa­gan­da which rein­forces the great lie at the heart of the CIA’s EIT pro­gramme: that it worked. Of course, even know­ing what we do now about the CIA’s abhor­rent actions, the real­i­ty is that no one was ever pros­e­cut­ed for the human rights abus­es which occurred (and which are detailed with shock­ing real­ism in the film). A sense of qui­et fury cours­es through­out the nar­ra­tive, but we nev­er see that explode onto the screen, and it’s a more inter­est­ing, thought­ful film for it.