User Reviews

Mainstream medias are losing sight of their only reason to exist : Truth. Looking back, this has become shockingly obvious.

The movie is brilliant in letting us into the preparing of the show, and we have the feeling all is sufficiently backed up.

Then we are confronted with the tearing apart of the story, piece by piece, first by internet users and then we realize once the power of the Neocons is upon it's victim, they won't care about truth and shout tons of lies to redirect public focus away from the topic, which was Bush's fake military service. The biggest media will surrender and sacrifice their best reporters just to keep the money flowing in.

What was it about Bush's informant, the German secret agent Curveball lying about chemical weapons in Irak? The US were told it wasn't true, but their leaders never had to pay the price to surrender the white house. Where were the medias to prevent war in Irak, Neocon's biggest lie which cost billions and thousands of lives.

The medias were the fourth power in democracies, but they are no longer a threat to governments propaganda, they have become their dogs.

This movie shows that reporters have to choose between career or truth. They can't have both, anymore. The forth power of democracies has shifted to the Internet, its unlimited communities are more effective investigators then any mainstream media on the leash.

Journalism is captured in a cage of truth. But the Internet can still use the same weapons as governments : Lies.

And while a lie is best told in between truth, reciprocity is also true.

Cate Blanchett, Robert Redford, Dennis Quaid, and Bruce Greenwood star in "Truth" from 2015.

This is a film you can't win writing about. Just take a look at the message board.

The story concerns documents that were given to "60 Minutes" stating that Bush used family connections to get out of going to Vietnam, and that he was a national guard pilot who was rarely around and, as such, could not be evaluated.

Mary Mapes (Blanchett) attempts to verify the documents, finally getting verbal confirmation and people to talk on camera. Dan Rather reported on it.

Then information began to surface on the Internet that the documents were fakes, written, in fact, on a computer in Microsoft Word. A big thing was the appearance of a superscript. However, this was explained as well, though there were no originals.

Then people who had spoken to 60 Minutes started waffling. The powers- that-be began to get nervous. Before you know it, the careers of Dan Rather and Mary Mapes were over.

The acting by Blanchett and Redford was absolutely wonderful, both being two of my favorites. Topher Grace, Bruce Greenwood, and Elizabeth Moss also gave strong performances.

The presence of Robert Redford in a film usually signals a liberal agenda. So I'm surprised people with another point of view even watched this.

The film, to me anyway, comes down on the side of 60 Minutes, giving the impression that Mapes did all she could to verify the documents, and that ultimately she was let down because of political pressure to state the memos were untrue.

A few things, since I was alive back in the '70s: Like it or don't like it, people, not just Bush (if he did), used family connections to stay out of Vietnam. The fact that there were so many children from well-known families in this one unit was suspicious.

This seemed to me another example like the Challenger - people knew it was going to blow up but sent it up on schedule anyway. 60 Minutes had verified these documents up to a point, but given the date they wanted to broadcast, they didn't have enough time to investigate further.

Explosive information like this, I would think, has to be run down to the ground. They didn't want to wait until after the election, but the schedule was full except for a date coming up in five days.

Mapes made an excellent point when she appeared before the antagonistic investigative committee, that it would be next to impossible for someone to know the right people, have inside information, and do the research involved in creating the memos - and then, ruin it all by sitting down and typing the memos up in Microsoft Word.

Rather left the show feeling that journalism had lost its integrity, that it succumbed to pressure to kill a story.

One has to make one's own decision about all this. My own opinion is that 60 Minutes did believe these memos, they did not present them knowing they were false, but they probably needed to spend more time on them.

One of the most striking scenes occurs while Mapes is before the board and is asked: Don't you believe that some of these men from prominent families actually wanted to serve? Long silence. Mapes: No. I do not.

A tense, absorbing film. The only thing is, to see Robert Redford, Bruce Greenwood, and Dennis Quaid looking so old depressed me more than I can say. Robert Redford looked embalmed. Forty years ago...well, I can't go back, any more than 60 Minutes, Rather, and Mapes can.

This is a very good film. The cinematography, writing, acting, pacing, and most everything else just works. Particularly satisfying is Redford's portrayal of Rather, while not an impression or imitation, treats the man with the respect which is his due. Based on Ms. Mapes's book covering the "Rathergate" scandal, it tends to cover both sides of the issue - was the story politically motivated? The film says "No!" but the words say "Yes!" It's left up to the viewer to decide - which is a welcome and refreshing movie experience in the days of Michael Moore leftist propaganda.

The problem I have with the story is the constant assertion that the CBS 60-Minutes news team did no thing other than pursue the truth. This is not the case by the film's own revelations. The team starts off with a clue that George W. Bush was AWOL during his "privileged" tour in the Texas Air National Guard, and that he was "released early" so he could attend Harvard. At times it reads like Stone's JFK with conspiracy theories flying about and fingers pointing at enlarged documents on the wall, building this "solid" case that Bush was deliberately put out of harms way because of who he is while others died in Vietnam. While the film does touch on John Kerry's "purple heart" debacle - it fails to mention stronger issues such as Bill Clinton being the beneficiary of friends in high places regarding Vietnam. The 60-Minutes crew has just one problem - they can't find any collaborating evidence to support their theory. They call everyone they can find and it isn't that no one is willing to talk about it, but they are constantly told there is no story here and getting hung up on. "No stings were pulled" they are constantly told. Suspecting that everyone is afraid of Bush, and rather than "following the facts to the truth," they continue to dig, and end up finding Bill Burkett, who has copies of two memos that seem to suggest that Bush was AWOL from the Air National Guard. They don't say that, but it's what Mapes WANTS to believe, and so they go with it. AWOL stands for "Away Without Leave" which means a soldier who has orders to be at a post at a certain time was not - in fact - there at that time and in violation of those orders. A soldier is not AWOL if he is away WITH permission - something the film glosses over. That is, we never know if Bush has permission or not - just that he was not on base to be evaluated - according to the memos.

They try to have the documents authenticated, and two of the four experts refuse to do it because they are not originals. Mapes pushes forward, backed by the belief that even if the memos themselves are fakes, the information on them is at least true, and that's good enough. They put the story together, and because 60-Minutes is being pre-emptied by - shudder, a Billy Graham crusade - they decide to push the story out in four days rather than - well - actually baking the story more before rushing it to air. According to the film, they were editing footage seconds before air time. But, it would seem, it was more important to get "the truth" out about Bush in the election year sooner than later, then say, do their jobs.

Calamity ensues after the airing, with everyone pointing out the very obvious proportional fonts used in the memos, the fact that they were copies of copies, the New Times Roman Font, and a silly stunt about the super- scripted "th" which indicate that the memos were produced using Microsoft Word. They actually dig through boxes of documents looking for a super-scripted "th" to "prove" that it was possible in 1972 to have a typewriter with such a feature. Tap-dancing and straw- grasping at its most desperate.

The film ends with an inquest, where Mapes defends the memos insisting that they must be real because of the intimate knowledge a forger would have to possess in order to create them, but then make the ridiculous mistake of creating them using Microsoft Word. That alone screams that the documents should not have been trusted, but Mapes did anyway because - well - you can't un-ring a bell and if it gets Kerry elected then it's all in being on the Right Side of History. Yet, it still doesn't excuse why the memo format wasn't questioned until it was pointed out to them. The punch line is that Mapes needed them to be true so they could smear Bush. Right or wrong, true or false, the story was run to smear Bush, which is NOT pursuance of the truth even if it should end up being the truth.

The film never takes a solid position on Bush, and I think that's the point. What is the truth here? It's left up to the viewer.

Blanchett is one of Hollywood's biggest assets, and she rarely, if ever, has disappointed. She is a true chameleon, a woman who transforms herself from the inside out. Her portrayal of psychological deterioration rivaled Leigh's "Desire" in "Blue Jasmine". She crumbled in front of our eyes. She's tremendous in "Indiana Jones IV" playing her villain with ultimate gusto. She is wonderful in "The Aviator" a movie that needed to be much better to match her talents, and she's top-notch in "Notes from a Scandal", and the little seen, "The Gift". I could go on for a while about her enormous talents, but I have to admit that I wasn't ready to see her in "Truth." Here she gathers the best of previous performances to put together a character that is based on real events and has managed to grow stronger and confident, reach professional heights that fall apart as she begins to take her investigation into places that could be a bit problematic.

The title represents a play in words because the film does deliver the truth behind certain events, and it's the truth that imprisons and basically ruins her career for she seeks to deliver it, but there are elements around that will not permit that to happen. In fact, even her prosecutors become aware of the fact that she doesn't lie. It doesn't matter because there must be a sacrificial lamb, and it's her professional life that fall victim to some of the most unethical maneuvers politicians and lawyers can design.

There are many amazing moments in the film, all of them showing her magnetic force. She gains our empathy when we discover how difficult it's for a woman to survive the constant abuse of her family. It's worse when we see that it's almost impossible to gain respect in her line of work. It's horrible to see how some people are not hesitant to destroy one person's life if it pleases some privileged members of the establishment.

In fact, her big scene, during the closing parts of her testimony will have everyone in awe for a long time. There's truth there, and we should treasure it. She is now in my top 3 actresses of all time.