Curator Watchlist
A dry but sharp procedural about institutional accountability, The Report turns a sprawling Senate investigation into a focused moral thriller. It’s talky and deliberately unspectacular, but the clarity of its outrage and Adam Driver’s committed performance make it compelling for viewers who like their political… Read more
Where to watch: Buy
Thu · 1h 59m
Director: Scott Z. Burns
Starring: Adam Driver, Annette Bening, Jon Hamm
The story of Daniel Jones, lead investigator for the US Senate’s sweeping study into the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program, which was found to be brutal, immoral and ineffective. With the truth at stake, Jones battled tirelessly to make public what many in power sought to keep hidden.
Scott Z. Burns
Adam Driver, Annette Bening, Jon Hamm
A dry but sharp procedural about institutional accountability, The Report turns a sprawling Senate investigation into a focused moral thriller. It’s talky and deliberately unspectacular, but the clarity of its outrage and Adam Driver’s committed performance make it compelling for viewers who like their political dramas rigorous rather than flashy.
The Report is built less like a thriller than a case file, and that’s both its strength and its limitation. Scott Z. Burns treats the Senate investigation into CIA torture with journalistic discipline, emphasizing documents, timelines, and the grinding labor of proving what powerful people would rather bury. The result can feel austere, but it also has a real moral force: the film understands that bureaucracy can be a battleground.
Adam Driver gives the movie its pulse as Daniel Jones, playing him as stubborn, methodical, and increasingly exhausted by the scale of the cover-up. Around him, the film keeps returning to the same unsettling idea: that the language of security can be used to disguise cruelty, and that truth often survives only through obsessive persistence. The dramatized torture scenes are blunt and intentionally hard to sit through, serving as the film’s ethical anchor.
It isn’t a particularly elegant or emotionally layered film, and some of its speeches and confrontations are a little on the nose. But if you respond to procedural rigor, political outrage, and the drama of people fighting through paperwork to expose state violence, The Report is effective and worthwhile.
Patrick Willems (3★) · 925 likes
Made me want to go watch Zero Dark Thirty, which doesn't seem like the intent
davidehrlich (3.5★) · 526 likes
A bracing and unwaveringly journalistic dramatization of the largest investigative review in U.S. Senate history, “The Report” is so dry that it makes “Spotlight” feel like a Fellini movie by comparison. In isolated stretches, the rigor of Scott Z. Burns’ screenplay and the discipline of his direction can be enervating; if Robert Mueller were a filmmaker, this is the kind of clerical thriller he would make. And yet, the coolheaded patience of Burns’ approach is precisely what makes “The Report”
Matt Singer (3.5★) · 468 likes
The early scenes of this movie made me think about Zero Dark Thirty. Then a few minutes later, Adam Driver actually watches Zero Dark Thirty onscreen. And I suppose that is exactly how the people who made The Report would like it to rest in our minds in relation to ZDT.
Josh Lewis (3★) · 429 likes
we tortured some folks. glad a broad corrective on this history is finally out there in a digestible way but it really needed a fincher to take it to the next level. (the rousing speechifying near the end, for example, is a mistake i think.) as is though, it's a pretty solid bureaucratic and moral dilemma thriller that's not so much dramatic as it is concentrated and determined, much like—you get the idea. also adam driver watching footage of Zero Dark Thirty on tv straight up one of the funniest things i've seen in a movie this year.
matt lynch (3.5★) · 353 likes
Occasionally hamfisted, deliberately unsexy, absolutely didactic; the inevitable comparisons to SPOTLIGHT both pro and con won't be unfounded. Sure it lacks the formal elegance/aggression of, say, ZODIAC or ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, but of course Scott Z. Burns is no Alan Pakula or David Fincher. No matter what this is a solid bipartisan 24 / ZERO DARK THIRTY diss track.
A similarly methodical investigation drama about institutions, documents, and the slow pressure required to force the truth into public view.
The classic template for procedural journalism on film: patient, detail-oriented, and powered by the accumulation of evidence.
For viewers who like obsessive process, institutional frustration, and the grim satisfaction of following a case through endless dead ends.
A corporate-political thriller with the same interest in systems, compromise, and the lonely work of one principled fixer.
Another tense, fact-driven drama about exposing wrongdoing inside a powerful American institution.
Dense, sober, and politically charged, with overlapping systems of power and a strong sense of moral corrosion.
A newsroom-and-power-structure thriller that balances investigation, conspiracy, and public accountability.
A press-and-power drama about the urgency of publishing uncomfortable truths despite political pressure.
A close thematic cousin: whistleblowing, state secrecy, and the personal cost of challenging official narratives.
For its courtroom-politics energy and its focus on how institutions shape public memory and dissent.
A restrained intelligence thriller that shares the same post-9/11 atmosphere of suspicion and bureaucratic maneuvering.
A different kind of systemic indictment, but equally interested in explaining a massive institutional failure to a broad audience.
government accountability, CIA torture program, post-9/11 politics, investigative procedure, institutional cover-up, moral courage, bureaucratic thriller, truth versus power
political drama, investigative thriller, bureaucracy, post-9/11, government corruption, legal procedure, moral outrage, journalistic realism, institutional cover-up, adult drama