Charlize Theron. Nicole Kidman. Margot Robbie. Shut up and take my money.
These three ladies are playing Megyn Kelly, Gretchen Carlson, and a ficticious amalgam of young impressional women, all working at Fox News under Roger Ailes. We know what eventually happened to him (or rather what happened to women because of him), and that aftermath. What I didn’t know was how that downfall went down. This is that story, told from the perspective of these amazing women and others.
I am about as anti-Fox News as you can get, so I really didn’t know a whole lot of this story. To some extent, I refused to know, So the majority of this story was entirely new to me. Therefore, I was on the edge of my seat throughout the whole film, which is in the running for my favorite screenplay of the year. It was absolutely non-stop, so much information rushing at me so quickly and I still wanted more. But this is written by Charles Randolph, who also wrote The Big Short, so it incorporates a lot of the same humor and fourth wall breaks and other fun things (I hate to say gimmicks because that has a negative connotation) that I loved that film for. Not quite as extreme as Short, but enough to really make this film stand out.
Our cast is of course fantastic. Charlize Theron is completely unrecognizable, in face and voice. But beyond that, our leading ladies really do own the screen, telling this story with power and conviction and owning every written word of it. It’s not every day that you get to see a trio of powerful ladies, and this is absolutely an argument for why we need more.
There’s an insane supporting cast too. John Lithgow plays Ailes, and though he is one of my most beloved actors, I absolutely detested him here. I never thought I’d say such words, but then again, there are few (if any) people who are more deplorable than Ailes. In addition, there were a lot of known faces and surprises in the cast. Kate McKinnon and Mark Duplass were standouts for me, but I won’t spoil the fun of discovering some of the others in the moment.
Bombshell – \m/ \m/ \m/ \m/