The Report Parent Guide

Daniel Jones (Adam Driver) is enjoying a pleasantly unremarkable university experience until 9/11 alters the trajectory of his life. The next day, he changes his classes to anything related to national security. Little does he know that the aftermath of that terrible day will affect his life more profoundly than a simple change of academic direction.

Six years later, Senate staffer Jones is directed by Senator Dianne Feinstein (Annette Bening) to lead a bipartisan investigation into the CIA’s post-9/11 unlawful detention and torture of terror suspects. Jones and his team will spend six years on the project, read over six million pages of CIA documents, write a 6,000+ page report and a 500 page summary, and spar with the CIA, the White House, and a number of senators, to get the summary made public.

The Report is a difficult film to watch, in more ways than one. Viewers who are not familiar with the large number of real-life players in this political drama might have trouble keeping all the faces and names straight. And they might struggle to remember the importance of some of the historical events. But those difficulties pale in the face of the movie’s true horrors: watching the torture perpetrated by American agents. Director Scott Z Burns tries to contextualize the events by showing the fear and desperation of the CIA agents who are afraid that failure on their part could lead to another attack on domestic soil. He does not shy away from showing where that fear leads them. Horrific scenes of naked or partially clothed men being chained to walls and ceilings, being beaten or receiving “rectal rehydration”, and being waterboarded can turn the stomach of any viewer. Watching as the Bush administration initiates the abuse and the Obama administration tries to cover it up is an exercise in bipartisan despair.

Although the story is hard to watch, the actors are not. Adam Driver gives a passionate performance as Daniel Jones, paling with outrage over each new revelation of human rights abuses and almost shaking when he learns that the report might never be made public. His internal struggle as he tries to decide whether to leak the report to a journalist draws viewers in. Standout performances also come from Douglas Hodge and T Ryder Smith as James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, architects of the “enhanced interrogation techniques” the CIA adopts to break down the psyches of the detainees being held in black sites. Hodge and Smith bring a dark cutting wit to their roles as psychologists turned national security snake oil salesmen. Blithely admitting their lack of experience in interrogation, both men manage to convince the CIA leadership that they can flip the Agency’s employee training SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) program and create a mirror image (debility, dependency, dread) that will destroy detainees’ abilities to withhold information. The CIA eventually turns over $80 million for a violent, brutal, program that even their own top secret review later proves was completely worthless in terms of obtaining useful intelligence.

The Report is not a film for everyone. It’s R-rating is well deserved for both the profanity (including ten sexual expletives) and the gruesome torture scenes. That being said, adults and teens with an interest in politics, recent history, national security, and ethics will consider this movie two hours well spent.