Monday Movie Review: Bombshell
Not going to lie, I went into this one already having some mixed feelings. Basically everything and everyone involved with Fox News gets zero sympathy from me because, if nothing else, they are complicit in promoting racism and misogyny. However, I am always down for a story about sexist white men getting their asses handed to them by their victims. And that’s kind of what this is?
Fox News host Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) brings a lawsuit against the network’s CEO Roger Ailes (John Lithgow) when she is fired. She has been repeatedly sexually harassed during her time at the network and she tells her lawyers many other women there experienced the same. She’s confident they will come forward and speak out on her behalf. Most of them don’t. Until Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron), who is in the middle of being publicly and repeatedly attacked by then presidential candidate Donald Trump, speaks out. Eventually Roger Ailes is forced to retire from running the network. At the same time, Bill O’Reilly (Kevin Dorff) is also accused of sexual harassment and is also forced to retire, though his story is not really covered too much in the film. The final shot of the movie is an infographic telling us Fox News paid out $50 million dollars to sexual harassment victims. And then adding on that they paid out $65 million in severance pay to Bill O’Reilly and Roger Ailes.
If you’re in the mood to be extremely aggravated and pissed off, then this is the movie for you! There is tons of actual archival footage from the 2016 election, both debates and news coverage, used in the film, and like, I don’t ever really want to relive any of that. And despite the absolute power house of a cast here, which also includes Margot Robbie, Allison Janney, Kate McKinnon, and Connie Britton, I didn’t exactly leave the theater feeling like the patriarchy had been damaged, let alone smashed.
On the surface, this film had everything I want: women coming together to confront the straight, white assholes who have been making our lives difficult for decades. And there was an element of that. But there was just as many shots of other women at Fox News wearing T-shirts declaring their support for Ailes. And Ailes’s wife being completely shocked her husband would ever do such a thing. And of course, that last little tidbit telling us that the two abusers were worth more than all of their victims combined. It was nauseating. Add in all the Trump shit I had no desire to ever see again and it’s a good thing my theater serves alcohol. Because that was the only way I could stomach this movie.
And that’s not to say that it’s BAD. Charlize Theron almost eerily becomes Megyn Kelly. Nicole and Margot are great, Kate and Allison brilliant as always. It’s just an uncomfortable movie to watch, and I’m still undecided if that’s a good or a bad thing. Overall, I’ll give this one a B- almost entirely for the strength of the cast.
