"Robert Redford looks nothing like Dan Rather, but with passion and decency he makes one of television’s journalism heroes as real as breathing. The movie is Truth, brilliantly written and helmed by James Vanderbilt, who makes a stunning directorial debut collating all the facts in the tragic story of how Rather and his two-fisted team of reporters and researchers on 60 Minutes, spearheaded by ace producer Mary Mapes (a devastating Cate Blanchett), steamrolled a great story on the air—a stop-the-presses exposĂ© of how a young, privileged George W. Bush paid off people of influence in the 1970s to get him a safe job in the Air National Guard that would save him from combat duty in Vietnam. It should have been another triumph for the crown prince of network news, but Mapes and her crackerjack team failed to check Bush’s secret military documents for accuracy. Instead of wrecking Bush’s chances for a second term in the White House, the scandal backfired. The media came down on Rather like an atomic missile, and the resulting scandal forced him to resign after 40 years at CBS and wrecked the careers of his entire staff. Coming on the heels of the career-derailing saga of Brian Williams, the subject couldn’t be more relevant, but there’s more to it than retribution for a controversial story.
Based on Mapes’ 2005 memoir, Truth and Duty, the narrative covers everything from dirty politics to the fickle nature of television executives who use the network news as a source of generating income. One of the finest films about journalism since All the President’s Men, with a pluperfect cast including Elisabeth Moss, Topher Grace, Dennis Quaid, Bruce Greenwood, Stacy Keach and Dermot Mulroney, I predict Truth will be one of the most controversial films of the year. Robert Redford skipped TIFF but sent in his place none other than Dan Rather himself, who answered honestly and forcefully every question posed by the press. He naively thought CBS would protect him and stand by him. Instead, they forced him to humiliate himself, apologize on the air and then resign. He still genuinely feels journalism is not a science, that even the most brilliant reporters are only human, and that when he broadcast the story that ended his 40-year career with CBS News on 60 Minutes the night of September 8, 2004, he was guilty of nothing more than believing too deeply in his own version of…Truth. Mark it in ink. This is one you must not miss."
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