by Anthony O’Connor
Worth: $14.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, Bill Burr, Wunmi Mosaku, Betty Gilpin, Billy Magnussen
Intro:
… amiable enough …
Facebook began with the best of intentions. Kinda. Created in 2004 by cursed ventriloquist dummy, Mark Zuckerberg, it was designed as a tool to increase connection amongst uni students. The site swiftly went on to spread across the planet, causing plenty of in-fighting and backstabbing amongst its co-founders. You can learn more about that whole situation by watching David Fincher’s 2010 banger, The Social Network. In the years since, Facebook has gone through changes, most of them bad. What used to be a way to keep an eye on your psycho ex or wish your nan a happy birthday has now become a toxic bullshit factory that is making everyone dumber and angrier.
Facebook is the reason that bloke you know who hasn’t read a history book since high school considers himself an expert in Middle Eastern geopolitics. It’s why you now see your “quirky” aunt doesn’t actually have “funny ideas” but is in fact massively, proudly racist. It essentially has turned everyone into that mad sheila from down the bus stop and given them all a microphone with international reach. Brilliant. We know how bad Facebook’s fuckery truly is thanks to a leak in 2021, the mechanics of which form the dramatic spine for the companion piece to The Social Network, The Social Reckoning. The result is solid, albeit not quite as good as the original.
The Social Reckoning revolves around three main people. There’s Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White), a newly hired Wall Street Journal reporter who is covering the tech beat, despite being something of a luddite and not even having a Facebook account. There’s Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison), a data engineer working at Facebook who is becoming increasingly concerned with the company’s amoral policies and, of course, there’s Mark Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong), the CEO of Facebook who is getting more comfortable doing nefarious things to keep user retention high. The narrative jumps back and forth in time and essentially covers the slow drip feed of information from Frances to Jeff and, later on, Zuckerberg’s attempts to do damage control when all is revealed.
Aaron Sorkin, the scribe of The Social Network, returns this time to write and direct, and the result is a talky film with great acting moments but none of the uneasy menace that made Fincher’s take on the material so iconic. The score, also, is a big step down with Reznor and Ross’ icy brilliance replaced with much more journeyman work from Alexandre Desplat. It’s ironic, too, because the events that take place in Reckoning are significantly more sinister than Network, but Sorkin is no Fincher and the film feels flatter as a result. The other big problem is one for all whistleblower films: the audience already knows the big revelations! Anyone who has even been vaguely online in the last five years is well aware of the fact that social media is like heroin laced with barbed wire, addictive and dangerous. This is not new news to most.
Still and all, if you like Sorkin’s brand of loquacious back and forths tinged with subtle optimism, and you want to enjoy the work from three terrific leads backed up by a host of excellent supports (including Bill Burr, Billy Magnussen, Betty Gilpin and Wunmi Mosaku), then The Social Reckoning is an amiable enough watch. Just don’t expect any jaw dropping reveals or definitive answers, as this is more like a slick dramatisation of what you already saw happen.
Hell, you probably saw it happen on Facebook, sandwiched between posts about the earth being flat and Avril Lavigne being replaced with a clone. Yeah, nah, thanks a bunch, Zucko!
