While Truth will no doubt come to be known for the film in which Redford portrays Dan Rather this is clearly Mapes' film and therefore Blanchett's to own. The superb actress does well to display her domineering presence early as it reign's over her assembled team with determination and vigor. Where the film really shines though is in the entertaining ensemble it has compiled that allows Blanchett's performance to become even more effective. It is the chemistry between the group that Mapes puts together that gives the film an energy and excitement that comes with digging into a story, following leads and every now and then stumbling upon something significant. Much of the more "fun and entertaining" aspects come from the camaraderie between Quaid and Grace (In Good Company 2, anyone?) as their odd couple relationship elicits the lighter side of the film while keeping the focus on the facts and providing the necessary insight and context to make this story as compelling as it is conveyed to be. It's something of a shame that Elisabeth Moss is underused and never feels as much a part of the team considering Quaid and Grace pair up while Mapes more or less sticks close to Rather. In terms of Redford's performance, he is more an intermittent presence, an extended cameo if you will, that is present because he's the face of the story and because his paternal relationship with Mapes serves as a basis to address Mapes' actual father and the motivation behind her drive. While "daddy issues" may sound a bit hackneyed it is potent in this context as Vanderbilt layers in the necessary elements at the right times allowing for this plot strand to reach a breaking point providing a moment for Blanchett to really deliver.
As the film comes to it's third act and it's revealed our listener is Mapes' lawyer for the purposes of an upcoming internal investigation that the President of the CBS news division, Andrew Heyward (Bruce Greenwood), authorized the film really begins to let it's agenda show. Truth still gives the relativity of the titular word it's due, but it is clearly labeled as the enemy. This positioning is ultimately unsurprising though and what is more important is that Mapes' interview with a board of intimidating, intelligent lawyers (no matter how biased they're made to look) is that it presents how easily oppositions can be swayed in either direction given how someone is coming at a situation. Through this delegation of opinions and the presentation of the facts less as facts themselves, but as actions that can be twisted and turned in any fashion Truth gets across it's main idea that the world is too big to have become so small. "There is no public trust in the news anymore," Rather tells Mapes at one point. Despite the market being saturated and every news station preaching little more than the agenda of their parent company one has to wonder how bad it is for society to have so many voices shouting their opinions through "infotainment" making us question if a single voice like Rather's, that claimed to present the basic facts while allowing the audience to draw their own conclusions, would even still work. Was this ever really true? Was the news ever that pure? These aren't new things to wonder, but Truth does a fine job of harping on them and getting into the small details that make the world turn and a journalists career live or die. For that, it's both tremendously involving and entertaining.
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