The opening is flat and not well paced. It came to life ten or fifteen minutes in with the first appearance of Billy Crudup as the trial lawyer Eric Macleish, who gave this film a much-needed jolt of energy.

Fortunately, the film does build, and the more the story unfolds, the more gripping it becomes, and seemingly, Tom McCarthy's direction improves, too. The performances are all very good, the writing is solid, and the production design is admirable. I don't see Mark Ruffalo's work as Oscar-worthy, which is not to knock it. I thoroughly appreciate the way the performances are underplayed--a performance cannot be more underplayed than Liev Schreiber's, yet that seems right for a character who never shows his cards. It's easy to imagine an approach that has all the reporters emoting heavily as they come to realize the horror of the situation.

Michael Keaton as Walter Robinson, John Slattery as Ben Bradlee, Billy Crudup as Macleish, Stanley Tucci as Garabidian, Jamey Sheridan as Sullivan, and Len Cariou as Cardinal Law are all outstanding, as are others I'm probably forgetting to mention. The minor parts are cast with actors with faces who look like they belong in Boston, such as Rachel McAdams' grandmother or the woman who plays the priest's sister.

The story is so compelling that I was very glad I had seen it, though a crispness of approach from the beginning, establishing characters from the get-go, would have made the movie even better.

Sometimes, a film of this type makes a real impact... just sometimes... But, it very often doesn't have any impact at all like in the case of movies like Dark Waters (Dupont) or Deepwater Horizon (BP) or Love & Other Drugs (Pfizer/Eli Lilly) or The Big Short (Banks) or Thank You For Smoking (Tobacco)... I'd like to think that this film had at least a measurable impact on society and more specifically, the amount of sexual abuse cases in religion... and that in itself, is commendable.

The film does a good job not only focusing on the main cast of characters, but also spends some time focusing on the sub-supporting characters, like the 'survivors' in the film and spends a good amount of time on the investigative part of the whole story as well... journalism like this didn't just fall out of the sky... it took months and months of hard researching and interviewing many many different people...

They obviously took some creative license wrt. the events and timeline of certain parts of the film, but overall about 90% of the events shown in the film actually happened. And overall it's a good film and a fantastic docu-movie that should be viewed by all at least once.

Before you consider watching "Spotlight", I STRONGLY urge you to think twice. It isn't because I think it's a bad film--it's amazingly good. But it's also a difficult film to watch--particularly if you or someone close to you has been a victim of sexual abuse. I know that in my case, it was particularly tough because I am a retired psychotherapist and used to specialize in working with sexual abuse victims and perpetrators...the latter, which, I think benefit very little from treatment (which is much of the reasons I changed careers).

The story is about not only the discovery of a huge number of pedophile priests in the Boston parish by Boston Globe reporters but the organization's discovery that the problem went all the way to the top. In other words, even the beloved Cardinal Bernard Law KNEW about the many, many victims and yet did nothing to discipline them or restrict their access to more victims. But the film doesn't just talk about so much that we know to be true today but it covers the stop by step process by which the paper began and completed the investigation.

Why did I give the film a 10...particularly since I almost never give films such high scores? Well, the reason is that the folks making the movie really, really cared about the subject matter and getting it right. Instead of focusing on making money with the film and including the usual glitz and glamour, the filmmakers chose instead to emphasize realism above all else. Normal looking actors (such as Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo) are used...and they make efforts to keep them normal looking. Additionally, the film has a relatively slow and deliberate pace--again as they weren't interested in making a pretty or Hollywoodizing the production. Overall, a great film made greater because the folks making it really, really seemed to care and wanted to get it right...which showed great sensitivity for the subject matter and the victims. Great film!