Bombshell doesn’t drop as hard as you’d expect
Those with an interest in all things #MeToo – both the positive and negative aspects of the phenomenon – will definitely walk away feeling Bombshell could have gone in harder.
Leigh Paatsch
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“News is like a ship,” pontificates Roger Ailes (John Lithgow) during the new #MeToo drama Bombshell.
“You take your hands off the wheel, and it takes a hard left.”
For over two decades, it was Ailes’ instinctively combative corrections to the right at the helm of Fox News that transformed the cable TV broadcaster into an American media powerhouse.
However, as Bombshell is determined to reveal, the late Roger Ailes’ adherence to his own maritime analogy was not exactly watertight, and all but guaranteed his downfall.
Unable to take his hands off the female talent on his watch, the seemingly unsinkable Ailes torpedoed his legacy in definitively damning fashion.
However, it is important to note that Bombshell is not an Ailes biopic. We’ve already had one of those (an acclaimed miniseries The Loudest Voice, starring Russell Crowe).
Instead, Bombshell aptly and astutely trains its focus on three women whose linked experiences working for Roger Ailes traceda fault line that would soon crack open #MeToo into a fully-fledged movement.
Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) was the first to dare take on Ailes in the middle of last decade, a time at which the news chief’s leviathan reputation was at its most daunting.
Having already lost her spot on Fox’s flagship breakfast program, Carlson could sense she was being shunted off the network for not acquiescing to Ailes’ sexually suggestive overtures.
So Carlson began covertly amassing a suite of evidence that would force Ailes to mount a cautious defence in a place he preferred to act as fearless prosecutor: the court of public opinion.
Destined to join Carlson on her earth-scorching crusade against sexual harassment are fellow broadcaster and rising network star Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron), and ambitious production back-roomer Kayla Pospisil (Margot Robbie).
With so much fractious (and in some instances, still-disputed) ground to cover, Bombshell can feel as if it is sometimes tippy-toeing too softly in and around its subject.
Those with an aggressive interest in all things #MeToo – both the positive and negative aspects of the phenomenon – will definitely walk away feeling Bombshell could have gone in harder.
As for those Australian viewers who are unfamiliar with Fox News – and what was at stake for Carlson and Kelly at the time depicted here – some important sequences of the movie will not resonate as vividly as the filmmakers intended.
BOMBSHELL (M)
Director: Jay Roach (Dinner for Schmucks)
Starring: Charlize Theron, Margot Robbie, Nicole Kidman, John Lithgow.
Rating : ***
The first to erase a line too often crossed
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