Film Review: Bombshell

Originally published December 23, 2019

There are two types of movies “ripped from the headlines.” There’s the Clint Eastwood type and the Adam McKay type. Clint Eastwood handles a wide range of topics (mostly biopics) matter of factly and with a plain style. Adam McKay and his ilk do not. These films, The Big Short and Vice among them, attempt to be incisive, funny, often break the fourth wall and tackle topics that people might find hard to understand.

Bombshell is directed by The Big Short co-writer Jay Roach and falls firmly into the latter camp. It is about the downfall of Roger Ailes (John Lithgow) at Fox News after sexual assault allegations surface against him. The film is told from the perspective of three women: Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron), Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) and Kayla Pospisil (Margot Robbie). Kelly and Carlson are real people, while Pospisil is a composite character based on several Fox News producers.

Sexual assault doesn’t seem like a topic to be treated with a glib hand. Bombshell has jokes, but it isn’t nearly as funny as The Big Short or Vice or as serious as Showtime’s The Loudest Voice, which also depicted Roger Ailes. Bombshell knows when to treat its subject with respect. The changes in tone aren’t clumsy or abrupt, but they aren’t smooth either. You can certainly see the gears working when those changes happen.

The film seems afraid to explore the allegations or the characters with any significant depth. Megyn Kelly is portrayed as a straightforward hero. No moral problems from being a woman fighting for herself with one hand and putting other women down with another can be found here. Instead, the film resorts to pulling its biggest tricks out of the bag to convince the audience of Kelly’s heroism from the start. The most egregious is a scene in which the film implies Donald Trump’s campaign poisoned Kelly before a Republican presidential debate in Cleveland.

It’s saddening that a film discussing sexual assault allegations resorts to such grand histrionics to make its women seem like heroes. That women should not be sexually assaulted should be evident to any audience. If Bombshell trusted its audience or accepted that protagonists do not have to be heroic, it could have gone far deeper into the moral complexities of its main characters. Such a turn would have resulted in a richer film.

Roach and screenwriter Charles Randolph were seemingly confused about how to juggle their three protagonists. Kelly, Carlson and Pospisil share but one scene. It’s the elevator scene that features prominently in most promotional material.

Theron’s Kelly gets the most attention and screen time. Bombshell is clearly supposed to be her story with Carlson and Pospisil as ancillary characters. But Roach and Randolph also treat Carlson and Pospisil with equal footing, even getting plot lines that could have been A-plots in separate films. Kidman’s Carlson receives little to no opportunity to interact with the other main characters. By the time the film opens, she’s on the outs at Fox and mostly interacts with various lawyers. Robbie’s Pospisil is a fresh-faced producer who is quickly taken under the wing by fellow producer Jess (Kate McKinnon). Jess is a gay Hilary supporter who consistently looks out for Kayla even as she’s trying to hide her true feelings to keep her job.

Bombshell is lifted by an incredible cast. Theron, Kidman, Robbie, Lithgow and McKinnon all knock their roles out of the park. Lithgow and Theron are particularly uncanny in their depictions of Ailes and Kelly. It’s very easy to be fooled into thinking the real people were on screen. Robbie and McKinnon are a great duo who have several good scenes together and should work together more often in the future. It’s a rare dramatic role for McKinnon but she stands out in a supporting role. Here, she shows herself more than capable of handling dramatic work.

A great cast can only take you so far, as the limp script and some technical decisions prevent Bombshell from landing as hard as designed.

Final score: 6.7/10