Spotlight tells the true story of the Boston Globe journalists who revealed a cover-up of hundreds of paedophile priests by the city’s archdiocese, it is in many ways an old-fashioned journalism thriller in the same vein as All the President’s Men (1976), which chronicled the work of the newspaper men who uncovered the Watergate scandal.

The “Spotlight” team, the oldest continuously operating newspaper investigative unit in the United States is run by Michael Keaton as Walter Robby Robinson and overseen by Liev Schreiber as new editor Marty Baron. Also on the team are Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams who are both nominated for Oscars for their part.

The film is also up for best picture, (which it won) and best directing and best screenplay for Tom McCarthy who you may recognize from The Wirte.

If you are a fan of the Serial Podcast, Making A Murderer, or true crime in general then you will be blown away by this film.

I think the casting of actors who have appeared in superhero films is interesting, Ruffalo as the Hulk, Schreiber as Sabretooth in the Xmen/Wolverine films, and Michael Keaton as Batman and Birdman along with Rachel McAdams from True Detective, because these journalists really are like a band of superhero sleuths on the hardest case of their careers.

5 Stars