Spotlight: Based on a true story

Warning - This review contains some spoilers ⚠️ 

Spotlight tells the true story of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Boston Globe investigation into the abuse within the Catholic church. Directed by award winning, Tom McCarthy, Spotlight is a spine-chilling, emotional and well-written investigative dramatic piece which seeks to uncover the truth, telling the story nobody had told before.

How did they get it so right? A film that told the story perfectly from the very beginning. The real investigative team who covered the case in 2001 published more than 500 articles against Catholic priests and the church cover-ups.

Michael Keaton, who portrayed Walter "Robby" Robinson, the Spotlight editor, was fantastic throughout. Powerful even - I don't quite know how to describe it.

With fellow Spotlight reporter Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) by his side, it isn't exactly difficult to see why this film has won so many awards, as well as the reporters themselves. Rezendes was clearly passionate about the case to the point where he begins to yell in the office, upset at the fact people knew about it and did nothing.

Whilst the team are on a phone call to Sipe (who has been investigating the case for a while), they were trying to figure out how many priests were involved. Sipe said that six per cent of all priests would be the number in line with his findings. Matt Caroll (Brian d'Arcy James) calculates that one per cent is 15, meaning six is 90 priests.

Ben Bradlee Jr., portrayed by John Slattery then said: "If there were 90 of these bastards, people would know" to which Rezendes replied, "maybe they do". This was chilling and emphasises the decades of long cover-ups.

Rachel McAdams delivers a riveting performance as field reporter, Sacha Pfeiffer, especially when she interviews the victims. Mitchell Garabedian (Stanley Tucci) does well to stay guarded, without giving much away. He does however reluctantly hand out information but we are told the church is watching him.

Nearing the end of the film, we see what a phenomenal job the real investigative journalists themselves did. It became even emotional at the end when Robinson and Rezendes walked into an empty office after releasing the article, only to find them all in Spotlight, taking calls - all from victims.

Ending the film with Robinson saying the word "Spotlight" was poignant as he picked up the phone. The hard-hitting reality of the true story really kicked in when all the major cities were listed where  abuse had taken place. From the original number of 13 priests to 90 was hard enough to hear, but to discover it was more than 200 was just shocking. The survivors also gave Spotlight another emotional aspect, simply because they were, survivors.

This film and the investigation proves that journalism needs to stay alive, pertinent and when they tell a story, they must tell it well - just as they did in 2001.