Bomb­shell

As the theme of social jus­tice has become suf­fi­cient­ly top­i­cal to bring audi­ences into cin­e­mas, there has been a glut of films with a sin­gle issue as their hook which mis­rep­re­sent every oth­er polit­i­cal real­i­ty, and then hide behind that sin­gle issue’s grav­i­ty with a self-impor­tant shrug. Wel­come to the most heinous of offend­ers, Bomb­shell, direct­ed by Jay Roach of Meet the Fock­ers and Austin Pow­ers: Inter­na­tion­al Man of Mys­tery fame.

Bran­dish­ing the nar­ra­tive figleaf of ​‘women stand­ing up to a pow­er­ful sex offend­er,’ this piece of hot trash soft-ped­als the racist, homo­pho­bic, Repub­li­can-pro­pa­gan­da-machine that is Fox News, air­brush­ing the pol­i­tics of its female news anchors so that they can scan as straight­for­ward, ass-kick­ing heroes.

The film is based on real events: in 2016, Gretchen Carl­son sued her for­mer boss, the chair­man of Fox News, Roger Ailes, say­ing she was forced out of the com­pa­ny after refus­ing his sex­u­al advances and that he was a ser­i­al harass­er. Ailes denied it but, as more women came for­ward, includ­ing – cru­cial­ly – star anchor Meg­yn Kel­ly, the untouch­able Goliath began to topple.

Charles Randolph’s screen­play cen­tres on Kel­ly (Char­l­ize Theron) dur­ing the ​‘will she/won’t she go pub­lic’ peri­od of her career, as she weighs up whether to join Carl­son (Nicole Kid­man) in going on the record. A third blonde bomb­shell is an invent­ed char­ac­ter, Kay­la (Mar­got Rob­bie), Ailes’ newest, shini­est vic­tim, whose arc tails off into noth­ing­ness once she has ful­filled her func­tion of being harassed.

Bomb­shell stakes its hand on amass­ing an A‑grade cast and res­culpt­ing them with the use of pros­thet­ics and make-up. John Lith­gow is just about vis­i­ble, drown­ing as he is in an Ailes-sized fat suit, Mal­colm McDow­ell is a pudgy-faced Rupert Mur­doch, Richard Kind is Rudy Giu­liani and Kate McK­in­non is Kayla’s desk­mate at Fox – a Hillary-vot­ing les­bian whose arc also tails off after a few luke­warm gags and a clum­si­ly-han­dled act of cowardice.

Fur­ther­more, the script has no idea what to do with Carl­son once she has blown the whis­tle. To wit: scenes of Kid­man receiv­ing dra­mat­ic phone calls while furi­ous­ly rid­ing an exer­cise bike.

In the main, though, this is Theron’s show, and while it is a plea­sure to watch her com­mit­ting ful­ly to every moment, there is no sense of inte­ri­or­i­ty to her – nor to any­one. Roach’s ambi­tions extend to drum­ming up a ​‘you brave girls!’ tone, with each cast mem­ber tasked with bring­ing their all to whichev­er one note they have been allo­cat­ed with­in this tin-eared symphony.

A laugh­ably disin­gen­u­ous moment designed to place Fox News with­in the wider cul­ture takes place when a shop­per recog­nis­es Carl­son in the super­mar­ket and tries to shame her for her work on Fox. The film snooti­ly sides with Carl­son who tells her heck­ler that a mark of someone’s worth is how they treat peo­ple who dis­agree with them.

It is this scene that shows how obsti­nate­ly unwill­ing Bomb­shell is to add moral ambi­gu­i­ty to its real, flawed women, a qual­i­ty that under­mines its entire the­sis: if it has to work so hard to make these women heroes then it clear­ly feels that being sex­u­al­ly harassed isn’t an inher­ent­ly sym­pa­thet­ic position.