'Bombshell' film review: Theron, Robbie power this unsettling sexual harassment exposé
Charlize Theron asserts her place among the great film performances of 2019 in the gripping true story of power dynamics and sexual harassment in "Bombshell" (opening in theaters nationwide Dec. 20).
In short: A group of women decide to take on Fox News head Roger Ailes and the toxic atmosphere he presided over at the network. Theron, Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie and John Lithgow.
This docudrama is a pure docudrama, confidently intersplicing movie footage with authentic archival images. At times the actors portraying real-life Fox News personalities like Sean Hannity or Gretchen Carlson are photoshopped into network promo campaigns. Plenty of films edit in archival news footage into fictional works based on true stories, but "Bombshell" takes the blurring of lines between fact and fiction by utterly transforming the actors into their real-life counterparts.
Theron is utterly transformed into Megyn Kelly, starting with her striking resemblance to the TV personality to her physicality and even mimics Kelly's vocal quality. And what she achieves is not simply some broad impersonation, but rather, Theron becomes Kelly. This imbues "Bombshell" with urgency and uncertainty in this high-stakes gambit, where Kelly had everything to lose and little to gain by confronting and helping shed light on the repellent, widespread nature of the accusations that went to the very core of the network.
"Bombshell" exudes a constant paranoia. At one point, a Fox News employee quietly laments that "this place is crazy." In another scene that takes place room, as Robbie's ambitious reporter prepares to confide in her friend, her co-worker scans the bathroom before they start to talk. In another scene, just before two characters candidly discuss some potentially volatile information in a recording booth, one character unplugs the microphones. Everyone wants to speak the truth - but they only speak in hushed tones and only after making sure no one is eavesdropping. It's these small details that establish a pervasive distrust.
The film makes a deliberate, stylistic choice to break the fourth wall. Theron's Megyn Kelly opens the film by giving the audience a colorful and forthright guided tour of the annals of Fox News. This is an eccentric storytelling device to employ right out of the gate- and it does set an expectation that this is how the movie will be executed. Unfortunately this unorthodox device isn’t consistently used - either use it or don’t, anything in the middle is confusing.
"Bombshell" takes some glancing blows at Fox News, instead reserving its ire for the networks founder Roger Ailes. The network itself is the low-hanging fruit of soft targets to take potshots, but "Bombshell" remains focused on the prevalent toxicity of sexual harassment. Some percentage of people watching this will want or expect the film to tear down Fox News in addition to Ailes - but "Bombshell" is not that film.
Final verdict: "Bombshell" is not a comprehensive take on sexual harassment - it focuses on the victims, specifically how they are targeted for unwanted advancements and intimidated into silence. Timely, hopeful but unsettling.
Score: 3.5/5
"Bombshell" opens in theaters nationwide Dec. 20. This biographical drama has a running time of 108 minutes and is rated R for sexual material and language throughout.
