The Report
Written & directed by Scott Z Burns
Starring Adam Driver, Annette Bening, Ted Levine, Michael C. Hall, Tim Blake Nelson, Corey Stoll, Maura Tierney & Jon Hamm
In Cinemas
The Report is based on the real-life work of US Senate staffer Daniel Jones, who led the investigation into the Central Intelligence Agency’s international torture program that followed the 2001 World Trade Centre attacks.
Jones spent many years working in the basement of a CIA building reading millions of documents to compile the 6700-page Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Committee Report of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program — commonly known as The Torture Report.
The Torture Report showed that the CIA had broken innumerable laws and tortured people to death all for no result. The methods used simply compelled the victims to lie to end the pain.
However, the two psychologists who sold the methodology to the CIA were hired as “consultants” and paid $80 million for their handiwork.
Little wonder the CIA worked desperately to prevent the report from being published. The political manoeuvres around that provide the film's dramatic tension.
That these manoeuvres occurred under the Obama administration is not examined closely.
However, it is a tribute to writer and director Scott Burns that a story about a man who spent literally years in a windowless room in front of a computer can be so compelling. The fact that what is on screen is based on true events really cuts deep.