‘Agitprop for the Sorkin Brand’: A Pan of His Whistleblower Drama
IndieWire's review of The Social Reckoning — Aaron Sorkin's journo drama, with Oscar winner Mikey Madison and Jeremy Allen White cast as a whistleblower and a reporter, and a miscast Jeremy Strong opposite them — lands hard. The verdict: a draggy, so-what drama that does more work as agitprop for the Sorkin brand than as a paean to the press.
The sting is in where the film's loyalty lands: on its author's reputation rather than on the press. Plenty of pictures get called dull; fewer get accused of being, at bottom, an advertisement for the person who made them.
Set that beside an observation from Deadline's review of the same film — smart grown-up dramas are an increasingly rare bird in major studio cinema. A movie occupying so thin a niche, and carrying the Sorkin name alongside two movie stars, is easy to read as a statement about its maker. Which is roughly IndieWire's complaint, reached from the other side of the aisle.
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The branded-auteur charge is a hard one to answer. If the name on the poster is doing most of the selling, then every review becomes partly a referendum on that name — and a critic who finds the film hollow is effectively reviewing the reputation too.
Or the name is exactly what gets the thing made. Smart adult dramas are, by Deadline's account, increasingly rare in major studio cinema; a recognizable writer may be the admission price for anything aimed at grown-ups on a studio slate. That makes the review's target a little unfair — or at least aimed at the wrong party.