Aaron Sorkin is back! His signature rapid-fire tempo of dialogue in a smart script is his calling card once again. The tempo of the script gives every character moments of machine gun bursts of dialogue. If it makes think, It’s the core to the movie’s success.
This role is a long way from Mikey Madison’s Oscar-winning performance in Anora. As Frances Haugen, she’s sarcastic and drole, contantly questioning Facebook’s influence. Frances is a whistle blower consistently getting under the skin of her fellow employees. Sorkin’s showing her interaction with Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White, The Bear) as the new tech industry investigator at the Wall Street Journal grabs you and keeps you glued to the story.
Jeremy Strong (Succession, The Apprentice) has a much different take on Jesse Eisenberg’s Mark Zuckerberg in 2010’s Oscar-Winning The Social Network. Here Strong is stoic with close cropped hair and dead eyes. There is no ambiguity who the villain is in this telling of the true story of uncovering Facebook’s reprehensible tactics to get users stay on the app. He plays all-powerful ruler of his trillion-dollar-empire and has no regard for anything except growing his platforms. Sorkin makes Strong, as Zuckerberg, into such a creep that he crosses the line to be cartoonish. The actor gives him little texture and movement. He’s robotic, much like the real man himself.
Jesse Eisenberg, who took on the role of Zuckerberg in The Social Network, was offered the role again, but declined. He didn’t want to be associated with the real Zuckerberg and hates it when people come up to him and call him out as some kind of hero.
Sorkin starts with a fictionalized scene of an attractive young blonde (Portia Doubleday) live streaming her combative rage-filled, vile invective at a male and a female black police officer on Facebook. How was she radicalized?
Haugen, (Madison) working at Facebook, is all about data and sees engagement increasing exponentially as well as misinformation regarding COVID, politics, overuse by kids sometimes to drastic consequences, and online hate speech. Zuckerberg hides behind being a champion of free speech. The more Frances talks about it at work, the more frustrated she is as she is ignored or sidelined.
Horwitz Jeremy Allen White is low-key, a bit sarcastic, but most of all a dedicated journalist. He never raises his voice and never backs down whether it’s in confrontation with his steely and demanding boss, Kris (Betty Gilpin) or Facebook snarling executive Teddy (Billy Magnussen). Gilpin has some shining moments as the steely boss at the Wall Street Journal’s San Francisco Bureau. When Haugen finally leaks internal documents to Horwitz exposing that Facebook knew what they were doing for
profit, Horwitz wins a Pulitzer Prize for his Wall Street Journal series in 2021.
A lot of Sorkin’s script is constructed around Zuckerberg’s prep for his appearance and testimony at Senate hearings about influence of the platform on kids. Raya (Oscar Nominated Wunmi Mosaku – Sinners), leads the training, adamant down to the color of the neck tie to be worn. Charlie (Bill Burr) is the Greek Chorus, who goes way back with Zuckerberg and is there to tell him the truth he doesn’t want to hear. Charlie and Mark were besties at the inception of Facebook, but Charlie left when he saw what was happening. He’s there to help Mark, even though they still clash. Burr is great in this role, as a caustic critic to help Mark get ready for his day in the spotlight.
There is definitely a problem with the timeline Sorkin used to have more impact by showing the Capitol Riots on January, 6th, 2021 which doesn’t track with actual events introduced in this film. It’s out of order in more ways than one.
You may have to see this film more than once to catch all the nuances of the snappy dialogue. Sorkin obviously wanted to spotlight the importance of Investigative Journalism as a way of keeping social media safely in check. Social Media and now AI are both flourishing and growing. We understand the criticism leveled comparing Sorkin’s The Social Network to this film, and we agree. But Madison and White kept us engaged in this cautionary while we watched this screen.
Columbia Pictures 1 hour 52 minutes R
