Truth (2015)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Memorable, crazy movie

hyped garbage

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I saw The Post this week and decided to also watch Truth at home to compare two stories about journalism and the media. I found Truth to be just as compelling a story as The Post, with a steller cast and screenplay, with plenty of drama, even though I knew the general outlines of the story and the outcome for those at CBS News. I did not know a lot of the details about how CBS, Mary Makes, and Dan Rather were caught up in some unfortunate mistakes that had little bearing on the veracity of the claims about Lt. George W. Bush and his time in the Air National Guard. This story paints an even larger story about how corporations react to bad publicity and right wing pressures that if anything have gotten worse over time. The movie does a good job in presenting how much fact checking is involved in major news stories, and how easily it can all become unraveled through a series of small errors that add up to one large error. The movie makes a strong case for the truth of the story hence the title of the movie. Cate Blanchett is outstanding as Mary Mapes and Robert Redford is excellent as Dan Rather, and the supporting cast is uniformly excellent. This is a movie that contains top flight actors across the board. Do yourself a favor and watch this movie. It is a worthwhile two hour investment.

This is a very good film. The cinematography, writing, acting, pacing, and most everything else just works. Particularly satisfying is Redford's portrayal of Rather, while not an impression or imitation, treats the man with the respect which is his due. Based on Ms. Mapes's book covering the "Rathergate" scandal, it tends to cover both sides of the issue - was the story politically motivated? The film says "No!" but the words say "Yes!" It's left up to the viewer to decide - which is a welcome and refreshing movie experience in the days of Michael Moore leftist propaganda.The problem I have with the story is the constant assertion that the CBS 60-Minutes news team did no thing other than pursue the truth. This is not the case by the film's own revelations. The team starts off with a clue that George W. Bush was AWOL during his "privileged" tour in the Texas Air National Guard, and that he was "released early" so he could attend Harvard. At times it reads like Stone's JFK with conspiracy theories flying about and fingers pointing at enlarged documents on the wall, building this "solid" case that Bush was deliberately put out of harms way because of who he is while others died in Vietnam. While the film does touch on John Kerry's "purple heart" debacle - it fails to mention stronger issues such as Bill Clinton being the beneficiary of friends in high places regarding Vietnam. The 60-Minutes crew has just one problem - they can't find any collaborating evidence to support their theory. They call everyone they can find and it isn't that no one is willing to talk about it, but they are constantly told there is no story here and getting hung up on. "No stings were pulled" they are constantly told. Suspecting that everyone is afraid of Bush, and rather than "following the facts to the truth," they continue to dig, and end up finding Bill Burkett, who has copies of two memos that seem to suggest that Bush was AWOL from the Air National Guard. They don't say that, but it's what Mapes WANTS to believe, and so they go with it. AWOL stands for "Away Without Leave" which means a soldier who has orders to be at a post at a certain time was not - in fact - there at that time and in violation of those orders. A soldier is not AWOL if he is away WITH permission - something the film glosses over. That is, we never know if Bush has permission or not - just that he was not on base to be evaluated - according to the memos.They try to have the documents authenticated, and two of the four experts refuse to do it because they are not originals. Mapes pushes forward, backed by the belief that even if the memos themselves are fakes, the information on them is at least true, and that's good enough. They put the story together, and because 60-Minutes is being pre-emptied by - shudder, a Billy Graham crusade - they decide to push the story out in four days rather than - well - actually baking the story more before rushing it to air. According to the film, they were editing footage seconds before air time. But, it would seem, it was more important to get "the truth" out about Bush in the election year sooner than later, then say, do their jobs.Calamity ensues after the airing, with everyone pointing out the very obvious proportional fonts used in the memos, the fact that they were copies of copies, the New Times Roman Font, and a silly stunt about the super- scripted "th" which indicate that the memos were produced using Microsoft Word. They actually dig through boxes of documents looking for a super-scripted "th" to "prove" that it was possible in 1972 to have a typewriter with such a feature. Tap-dancing and straw- grasping at its most desperate.The film ends with an inquest, where Mapes defends the memos insisting that they must be real because of the intimate knowledge a forger would have to possess in order to create them, but then make the ridiculous mistake of creating them using Microsoft Word. That alone screams that the documents should not have been trusted, but Mapes did anyway because - well - you can't un-ring a bell and if it gets Kerry elected then it's all in being on the Right Side of History. Yet, it still doesn't excuse why the memo format wasn't questioned until it was pointed out to them. The punch line is that Mapes needed them to be true so they could smear Bush. Right or wrong, true or false, the story was run to smear Bush, which is NOT pursuance of the truth even if it should end up being the truth.The film never takes a solid position on Bush, and I think that's the point. What is the truth here? It's left up to the viewer.

The intricate, the detail? Important and accurate. Maybe.But the story plods along without any pulling on the dramatic elements to be interesting and worthy.Skip it.To over-simplify: Is this an important point in 'truth'? yes. there are many more incidents much worse that this. Injustice, inaccuracies, mistakes. Most of which can and have been made into much better films.this just does not click. Why? OK, the why is important, but the movie misses that. It's a boring step by step reason why smart people screwed up. But that's not entertainment, nor interesting. And not a good film.

This is a powerful telling of one of the most important stories of our times. Journalism has been under siege for a long time and TRUTH shows how corporate and political interests destroyed real journalists for trying to tell the truth about G.W Bush's "military service" during the 2004 election. During that time, the Bush campaign launched a smear campaign against John Kerry's service in Viet Nam, but wanted to bury any controversy over GW's own service record- one that included a scurrilous entry into the Texas National Guard. They succeeded in squashing that news, with the collaboration of CBS's own management and a biased Republican investigative committee with the agenda of discrediting every reporter involved in breaking the story. In spite of the heroic efforts of real journalists and investigative reporters, Dan Rather was forced to step down from CBS News Anchor, the producer was fired and Bush won the election. Cut to the present where News is treated as entertainment by every network and real investigative reporting is a thing of the past. Cate Blanchett has never been better, Bob Redford personifies Rather's integrity and intelligence, and the entire cast shines. BOTTOM LINE: This should be required viewing in every Journalism school in the country.