The Social Reckoning

Last night my nephew and I went to see The Social Reckoning at the Broadway and, while I didn't hate it, I found it to be very underwhelming.  Jeff Horowitz (Jeremy Allen White) is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal who transfers to the San Francisco Bureau in 2019 to investigate the role Facebook plays in influencing politics and culture.  When he reaches out to members of Facebook's Civic Integrity Team, data engineer Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison) is the only employee to respond.  She was motivated to examine the algorithms used by Facebook after her friend Kayleigh (Portia Doubleday) became radicalized by a white supremacy group on the site.  She discovers that the platform is prioritizing hateful and divisive content for engagement and revenue without regard for the consequences to the user and, while she is initially hesitant about revealing information that would harm Facebook or her job there, she eventually shares internal documents with Horowitz and then goes on the record which leads to testifying before the Senate.  This narrative is interrupted by repetitive scenes in which Mark Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong) is prepped by a crisis management team led by Raya (Wunmi Mosaku) for his upcoming testimony before the Senate about content moderation in 2021.  The investigation is interesting, even if it does go on longer than necessary, but it is not very compelling.  I already knew about the manipulation of algorithms on Facebook after watching the documentary The Social Dilemma so the conclusion was a bit anticlimactic for me.  Strong is brilliant as Zuckerberg (his voice and lack of expression are uncanny) but, in my opinion, his many scenes are more for effect than to advance the plot because all but one of them consist of him telling everyone that he is a free speech absolutist with no obligation to monitor content (these scenes stop the momentum of the investigation).  On a positive note, White and Madison do a good job of making Sorkin's dialogue sound believable and the verbal sparring between the two is entertaining (I loved the running gag about Horowitz's lack of tech knowledge).  However, while it is unfair to compare this to The Social Network (which is brilliant), it lacks the tension and visual flair of that movie and I can't help wondering what might have been if David Fincher had directed it.  This is definitely a movie you can wait to see when it streams.

Note:  This was my 100th new release in theaters this year.  I usually hit this milestone earlier but I only saw one movie at Sundance (instead of my usual 20-25) so I am a bit behind.