R | 1 h 48 min | Drama | 2008
There are times when doing the right thing brings pain, suffering, and possibly regret. One reporter discovers this in “Nothing but the Truth.”
The U.S. administration orders an attack on Venezuela, believing that it instigated an assassination attempt on the American president. Then, Rachel Armstrong (Kate Beckinsale), a reporter for the Washington-based Capital Sun-Times, runs an investigative report that makes things awkward for the federal government.
First, her report implies that the administration knew there was no link between Venezuela and the assassination attempt yet lied to Congress, implicating Venezuela anyway. Second, it names the CIA operative, Erica Van Doren (Vera Farmiga), who’d filed a top-secret report confirming that there was indeed no link.
That puts Armstrong’s newspaper and federal prosecutors on a collision course. Special prosecutor Patton Dubois (Matt Dillon) pressures a stubbornly silent Armstrong to reveal her source. So, she pays a personal price with imprisonment and estrangement from her family. Her newspaper pays a professional one with painful legal and reputational costs. Accused of treason and contempt of court, Armstrong stands her ground. Her editor Bonnie Benjamin (Angela Bassett) stands with her, braving costly fines and lawyer fees.
Hotshot attorney Albert Burnside (Alan Alda) fights in Armstrong’s corner before lower courts and then the Supreme Court. But judges rule that national security overrides concerns of an endangered free press. Slowly, but surely, Armstrong and Benjamin discover that there are no scenic routes to their lofty ideals. If they uphold democracy, through their belief in a free press, it’s going to cost them. In prison, Armstrong is unable to prevent her husband and pre-teen son from drifting away from her.
Screenwriter-producer-director Rod Lurie’s yarn about a fictional reporter from a fictional newspaper is meant to embolden editors and publishers; he urges them not to hesitate to back their journalists for fear of prohibitive costs: commercial, legal, and reputational. He tries to instill confidence in potential sources who are armed with content that influential institutions prefer to hide, but who don’t go on record fearing for their privacy, their reputation, or their life. He also cautions powerful and otherwise credible institutions against overreach that undermines the very democracy that gives them both credibility and power.
Mr. Lurie graduated from West Point and served in the U.S. military before turning investigative entertainment reporter and critic, and finally screenwriter-filmmaker. His grasp of strategic affairs, statecraft, and journalism inspires his execution here. In interviews, he’s said: “Heroic protagonists struggling against outside forces to do the right thing … isn’t that sort of a classic dramatic struggle that we often see in great literature or in films? ... I would take it one step further and say that ‘Nothing But the Truth’ and several of my other films deal with a person’s struggle against themselves … in other words: fighting for their principles even if it means adversely affecting their own self-interest.”
Portrait of Principled Reporting
In heated exchanges between his characters, Mr. Lurie throws out issues typical of films that pit the First Amendment against national security, but some less typical, too.As incarceration stretches on, Burnside wonders if Armstrong can flex her journalistic code of honor a little. He’s defending her, not a principle. Can’t she be a little pragmatic for a change? Armstrong lunges forward, “If we back down … what are we saying? … Trust reporters as long as they’re not mothers, because they’ll crack.” Later, Burnside acknowledges her heroism by confiding in court that, with brave folk, “there’s no difference between principle and the person.”
In another scene, Van Doren weighs her options with her legal counsel. You see the stakes involved as editors consider being hit with libel suits or federal action, before backing their reporters.
Importantly, Mr. Lurie exposes Armstrong’s vulnerability. She’s not some one-dimensional character, unflinchingly heroic. She has her moments of doubt, filled with shame, guilt, regret, and self-loathing. Hearing of the chaos that her journalism has caused Van Doren personally and professionally, and speaking as much to a troubled Benjamin as to herself, Armstrong once tearfully asks, “Am I doing the right thing?”
Ms. Beckinsale transitions thoughtfully from confident, even cocky, reporter to embittered wife and embattled mother. Ms. Bassett is engaging as the hard-nosed but sympathetic editor. Mr. Dillon is brilliant as the ruthlessly single-minded prosecutor, and Mr. Alda shines as the slick attorney shaken out of his complacency into defending a truth he grew up on but has temporarily forsaken: In a democracy, a free press is not just desirable, it’s indispensable.
