above, top: Adam Driver as Dan Jones; middle: Annette Bening as Dianne Feinstein; bottom: Tim Blake Nelson, T. Ryder Smith, Douglas Hodge
Excerpts from reviews (Sundance Festival, 2019)
A rapt, tense, electric, slice-to-the-bone-of-what’s-happening sensation . . . The sort of movie that Hollywood once made and now, for the most part, comes up with only rarely: a large-scale saga of corruption, justice, and overwhelming relevance that’s at once gripping and eye-opening, even if you’re the sort of news junkie who thinks they already know the story. – Variety
It’s such a rare thrill to see a smart, adult drama like The Report that I left its Sundance premiere on an adrenaline high as if I had just seen the latest Mission: Impossible movie, giddy from the ride I had just taken. . . . The Report is an angry, urgent film that rarely raises its voice, smartly conveying inhumanity and injustice without unnecessary drama. I found it thrilling. – The Guardian
An explosive political thriller . . . The Report doesn’t dwell on visual depictions of torture to the point that feels excessive or indulgent . . . but it offers just enough viscerality to be crystal clear on what this story is really about. In fact, The Report is not without humor. The two charlatans who sell the torture program to the CIA in the first place, retired Air Force psychologists played by Douglas Hodge and T. Ryder Smith, are like a sadistic Marx brothers duo, convincing the CIA that they have the “special sauce” for interrogations through a series of surreally cruel but anodyne power points — execution orders written in comic sans. They deflect questions about their ridiculous methods with deadpan one-liners, playing off an increasingly exasperated CIA agent played by Maura Tierney. . . . I’d happily watch a dark comedy spinoff just about these two, a Catch 22 for the age of corporatized imperial brutality. – Uproxx
A bracingly dry, talky, but ultimately fascinating film, an account of real events . . . starring Adam Driver as a dogged Senate aide investigating the CIA’s use of torture after 9/11, under the protection of Dianne Feinstein, played by Annette Bening. . . . The contents of the torture report are revealed in increments . . . First came conventional interrogations of suspected terrorists and then CIA executives hired contractors James Mitchell (Douglas Hodge) and Bruce Jessen (T. Ryder Smith), who offered more ostensibly efficacious techniques. Gradually it becomes clear that Mitchell and Jessen are little more than contemporary snake-oil salesmen, albeit ones who believe in their product, veterans with psychology degrees but not in possession of any kind of scientific evidence that these old methods with new-fangled names — waterboarding, stress positions, rectal hydration and so on — actually work. Burns generates some cruel black comedy out of the contrast between the crisp graphics of the PowerPoint display with its stick figures and the reality that unfolds in seedy dungeons with jaundice-yellow lighting . . . Burdened with a surfeit of explication to download via dialogue, the cast is set a challenge to get it across with naturalism, laying it down like they know what they’re talking about. Fortunately, all are up to the job . . . A very vital and rewarding film. – The Hollywood Reporter
Trailer
On set
Scott Burns, writer/director, center
in one of the tunnels of the shoot, Bronx location
crew lighting one of the tunnels
between takes in one of the interrogation rooms
on set talking with actor Carlos Gomez
Manhattan location
mountain bike riding scene
producer Steven Soderburgh working the camera on this shot
shooting aboard a luxury jet
Westchester location
on board the jet
actor Douglas Hodge as Bruce Mitchell
DP Eigil Bryld squeezed into corner
Offscreen
mountain-bike lesson with the superb James Miller
without whom the scene would have been a disaster
Background
Bruce Jessen
Articles on the film’s production and promotion
here
and
here
2007 Vanity Fair article which inspired the film
“Rorschach and Awe” by Katherine Eban
Rorschach and Awe | Vanity Fair
2014 Vanity Fair follow-up article by Katherine Eban
The Psychologists Who Taught the C.I.A. How to Torture (and Charged $180 Million) | Vanity Fair
Article on Dan Jones’ battle to get the report published
from the Guardian UK, by Spencer Ackerman
linked here
Article on film’s sale at Sundance
here
