The Report – Adam Driver takes the CIA to task

Despite spending almost an entire movie in badly-lit rooms reading stacks of paper and blinking at computer screens, Adam Driver reaffirms (yet again) that he’s perhaps the most compelling actor of his generation in The Report, Scott Z. Burns’ gripping, info-heavy political thriller that does for the CIA what Spotlight did for the Catholic Church.

In his debut feature, the writer-turned-director (scribe of The Bourne Ultimatum and Contagian) is clearly taking his cues from Spielberg’s recent Pentagon Papers thriller The Post. Like that film, he’s concerned with instances of foul play deep within government institutions and zeroes in on the controversial CIA program that permitted the torture of close to 100 detainees in the wake of 9/11. Driver plays real life Senate staffer Dan Jones, tasked here with compiling a report to explain why the CIA might have felt the need to destroy large collection of tapes relating to the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” back in 2005. The Report goes directly against Zero Dark Thirty‘s more ambiguous torture stance on the evidence that no actionable intelligence was ever attained under the cruel and ruthless program (Burns even takes a brief jab at Bigelow’s movie when Jones glimpses an advert on television).

Burns has spent much of his career under the tutelage of Steven Soderbergh (that director’s similarly-minded Panama Papers movie, The Laundromat, looms on the horizon), and The Report unravels with a slick, elegant approach that evokes the preferred style of his mentor. It gets off to a rough start with too many location changes and jumps in time, but once it finds its rhythm the movie pulls you into its world of flickering lights and shadowy corridors and doesn’t let go until the credits roll – especially as we drive towards Jones’ inevitable collision with the CIA, so desperate to cover their tracks that they’re even willing to frame him as a criminal. Corey Stoll turns up in a small role as a lawyer who advises Jones not to lawyer-up, whilst Jon Hamm, Matthew Rhys, Ted Levine, and Michael C. Hall pad out the cast in roles that suggest reliable actors being brought in to deliver exposition. Annette Bening gets the second largest role as State Senator Dianne Feinstein, but – as though on loan from Adam McKay’s Vice – she never thoroughly convinces.

There’s something ultimately refreshing about Burns’ approach, mostly in the crisp, unfussy direction and the film’s overall refusal to engage with anything that’s not directly connected to its investigative story (Jones’ life was overwhelmed by his task for five years, and so it’s the task – rather appropriately – that overwhelms the movie). Free from unnecessary Hollywood subplots, there is an occasional sense that we’re watching a big screen adaptation of a Wikipedia article. It was essential, then, that Burns landed an actor who – even at their most restrained – demands we pay attention: Driver’s committed and generous performance is the key to The Report‘s success. It keeps us anchored to a dense script, and – like Jones – hungry for the truth.

★★★★☆

By: Tom Barnard

Get The Report showtimes in London.

This film was screened for the press as part of the BFI London Film Festival 2019. For more information and showtimes for this year’s festival, head to our dedicated page.