His latest film plays less like a historical drama and more like a thriller. Turning his incisive aesthetic away from his earlier political interests, director Jay Roach (Recount, Game Change, All the Way) here teams up with The Big Short writer Charles Randolph to deliver a searing indictment of the sexual abuse scandal that rocked Fox News. It's almost hard to remember, but the accusations against Roger Ailes made headlines more than a year before Weinstein's disgrace and the #MeToo movement. In many respects, Bombshell presents itself as a sort of origin story, and its filmmakers bring into sharp focus the changing culture of media and the unspeakable tensions it creates internally.
We begin with Megyn Kelly leading us through the halls of the national Fox News studio. It's a lengthy sequence that features Kelly speaking directly to us through the camera, narrating the front lines of conservative news generation and execution. But she's also in the scene, communicating with her peers and coworkers, seemingly comfortable and amiable in a friendly, almost familial environment. But in furtive glances and occasionally clenched tones of voice, we are keenly aware that this is a cutthroat occupation, one we've seen before in movies about the media, and that the insularity and self-righteousness of Fox News will only make the proceedings more fraught.
I'm sorry, did I say Megyn Kelly? I think I meant to say Charlize Theron as Megyn Kelly. It's almost impossible to differentiate the two here, so complete is Theron's transformation. Thanks to some Oscar-worthy prosthetics, the actors of Bombshell look a lot like their counterparts, including Theron and a gobsmackingly brilliant John Lithhow as the monstrous Ailes. But in no other film of 2019 have I seen such a chameleonic performance as Theron. I often and consistently forgot Kelly wasn't just playing herself, as Theron's stilted, measured voice flawlessly replicates those of her real-life character counterpart. Theron's miraculous performance also has incredible emotional intelligence, allowing the icy and calculated Kelly to become accessible and even sympathetic. Knowing what we know now about her time at Fox gives her opening walkthrough scene an eerie undercurrent; it's meant to be sprightly and fun, but we know her discussion of survival and success is rooted in very real trauma. She makes Kelly's unique brand of beauty and brutality make sense.
Thankfully, the actors are brilliant across the board, and the enormous ensemble cast all fill their roles well. It can't have been easy to represent so many familiar faces, voices, and personalities, but there isn't a moment in the film where you're distanced by a performance as you wonder who that person is supposed to be. The only time I was taken aback was when, after several shots and lines of dialogue, I finally realized that Allison Janney was onscreen as Susan Estrich, Ailes's lawyer. Most fascinating to me, though, is Margot Robbie as Kayla, a fictional character who appears to be made as a sort of composite of several women who all fell prey to Ailes. The always reliable Robbie delivers an emotional knockout performance and is nowhere more effective than in a disturbing early scene as Ailes watches her turn and pull up her skirt so he can see her legs. Television is a visual medium, as he says, and he wants to make sure she has the goods.
Jay Roach's attention to detail and infectious sense of urgency combined with Charles Randolph's ability to make complex stories palatable and entertaining make Bombshell endlessly watchable. Occasionally it feels like an extended episode of an office sitcom, other times it feels like a manifesto against workplace harassment, and still other times it feels like an ensemble thriller. At times I wanted the dialogue to go a little deeper, to have some more intimate understanding of these characters and the office politics. The film leaves unanswered several questions for me, including my most burning question: Why on earth would all these women -- especially Kate McKinnon playing a lesbian friend of Robbie's -- have chosen to work at Fox? It's hard to imagine they didn't know what they were getting into. But then again, that sounds dangerously close to blaming the victims, something the film staunchly guards itself against.
Its balancing act of humor and thrills looks easy, so well have the artists done their job, and within only a few minutes the movie made me laugh out loud, gasp in shock, and even leak a tear. This is intellectually and emotionally brutal filmmaking at every level, and even though you know the story it tells, every moment feels fresh and surprising. There is some discussion of Trump, who makes appearances via stock footage, and the film would be decidedly incomplete without his inclusion. I felt torn about this, though, as I wanted either more intelligent discussion about him or perhaps a little less; as it is, he's basically there for context, and I found the lack of anger toward Trump made the general anger of this film feel occasionally flaccid. But Bombshell quickly became one of my favorite movies this year because, as McKinnon advises the newbie journalist, Fox News aims to "frighten, titillate", and this film repurposes that methodology to devastating effect.
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