James Vanderbilt's fascinating proceduralTruthis the not-made-up story of the bad days at Black Rock in 2004 when CBS News producer Mary Mapes (Cate Blanchett) and anchor Dan Rather (Robert Redford) ran a report on60 Minutes IIasking whether George W. Bush leaned on his privilege to avoid serving in Vietnam. When the right-bloggers allege that the investigation's key documents were faked, the underlying question of Bush's service record gets swept away in the ensuing shitstorm which cost both Mapes and Rather their jobs. Redford's presence seems predestined, asTruthis a spiritual descendent to his turn as the president-investigating Bob Woodward inAll the President's Men, and he also directed the criminally underrated truth-in-television dramaQuiz Show. But perhaps because Dan Rather was never an especially incendiary personality to begin with, Redford's performance never catches fire. Instead, the picture belongs to Cate Blanchett's Mary Mapes, as she endures a very public scrutiny of both her gender and her politics, particularly at a time when "liberal" and "feminist" were treated as four-letter words. (Even more so than they are now, that is.)Truthalso has plenty of tasty typography porn; it may well be the first time that kerning has been a plot point in a major motion picture, but hopefully it won't be the last.
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