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List Price: $19.94 | | Label: Sony Pictures
Salesrank: 13672
Released: April 28, 2009 |
| Our Price: $5.65 |
| Used Price: $1.40 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Inspired by true events. Kate Beckinsale and Academy Award® nominee Matt Dillon (Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role for Crash, 2004) lead an all-star cast in this explosive story about a Washington, D.C. reporter who faces a possible jail sentence for outing a CIA agent and refusing to out her source. The all-star cast includes Academy Award® nominees Alan Alda (Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role for The Aviator, 2004), Angela Bassett (Best Actress in a Leading Role for What's Love Got to Do with It, 1993); Emmy® Award nominee David Schwimmer (Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for Friends, 1994), Golden Globe® nominee Noah Wyle (Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture for ER, 1997-99) and Vera Farmiga (The Departed).
Description of Nothing But the Truth:
A U.S. President itching to start a war... A confidential report telling the Administration the opposite of what it wants to hear... A Beltway wife outed to the press as a CIA operative... And another woman, a hotshot reporter, threatened with jail because she won't reveal her source... Yes, it does sound like the Bush-era case of Valerie Plame and New York Times journalist Judith Miller--and by the time you make it to the end of writer-director Rod Lurie's latest inside-Washington shadowplay, you may wish he'd served up that real-life story instead of half-baked fiction. Kate Beckinsale plays the reporter, a rising star with a ponytail and a Pulitzer-worthy scoop, "Watergate and Iran-Contra combined." The film's best scenes have her tussling with the Plame figure (the formidable Vera Farmiga). Lurie makes them soccer moms whose kids play together--a proto-feminist gesture befitting the creator of The Contender (the movie with Joan Allen as a Vice Presidential nominee battling a sex scandal) and Commander-in-Chief (the short-lived TV series featuring Geena Davis as America's first woman President). Nothing but the Truth trumpets its this-wouldn't-happen-to-a-man outrage but resorts to woman's-picture subplots involving weak, unreliable spouses--then compounds the lapse by leaving the male roles underdeveloped. Lurie seems to be working his way down a checklist of themes (sexism, the need to protect the freedom of the press, the way lives get left behind by the 48-hour news cycle) and possible impacts a person in Beckinsale's position might experience. Finally, his film is a make-your-own-movie kit leaving the viewer free to focus on favorite ingredients. Apart from Beckinsale and Farmiga, the name cast (Angela Bassett, Noah Wyle, et al.) is mostly reduced to revving their engines, though Matt Dillon scores as a special prosecutor mixing folksiness and cold calculation, while Alan Alda gets to showboat as a legendary defense attorney. The widescreen setups abound in irritating mannerisms and pointless foreground clutter, but since cameraman Alik Sakharov did clean work throughout the epic run of HBO's The Sopranos, the blame must lie with the director. And that's the truth. --Richard T. Jameson
Nothing But the Truth Reviews:
Slow movie w/ a shocking ending! 
2009-11-27 - A great cast w/ a secret that can't be told. The ending will leave you BREATHLESS!
Horrifying 
2009-11-24 - This frightening and realistic movie will upset both liberals and conservatives. It is very engaging with some edge of your seat moments and relentless in its pursuit of bringing you to hate Matt Dillon.
THIS FILM AIMS LOW--AND HITS WHAT IT AIMS AT 
2009-10-12 - Just as all sorts of very different animals--such as bats, kangaroos, monkeys, alligators, seals, cattle, mice, etc.--have brains, eyes, ears, teeth, backbones, ribs, shoulders, hips, hearts, lungs, etc. as their similar components, any writer (or any two or more writers) can use basically one group of component parts to accomplish many different purposes or effects. For instance, take a good king, his murderous brother, and the good king's son--one writer makes HAMLET, and another makes THE LION KING. A third writer can change the mix a tiny bit--and come up with MADAGASCAR: ESCAPE 2 AFRICA.
NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH takes some of the components of the real-life story of outed CIA agent Valerie Plame, her husband Joseph Wilson, and Judith Miller (the NY TIMES reporter who was jailed for not revealing her source)--and turns them inside out (in his commentary, Rod Lurie, an ex-newspaperman and the writer-director, says, "I wanted to put in the character of a reporter . . . somebody that was, in fact, RIGHT about the story she was reporting on, and so, from almost every point of view, was NOT Judith Miller"). The film focuses on a reporter (Kate Beckinsale) who publishes an article revealing that the White House attacked a foreign country despite a CIA agent's report that that country had nothing to do with an attempt on the U.S. president's life. What follows is a battle to learn who the reporter's sources were. Matt Dillon (special prosecutor) tries to squeeze the information out of the reporter by throwing her in prison; Alan Alda (her defense attorney) is an ineffectual, pathetic fop most of the time. Months pass, and the case goes to the Supreme Court, where the expected decision is rendered. And Dillon's character (apparently vindictive because he has totally failed to learn her main source) sees to it that more punishment follows--tangentially providing a rather ugly view of "our" government. Almost as ugly is the collapse of the reporter's marriage: within just a few months of her being sent to prison, all her husband can focus on is finding another woman to have sex with.
And what, at the end, does this all add up to? This film, judging by the way its components have been edited and cut, merely turns out to have been a kind of Puzzle for us viewers to solve if we can. This means it is in the same category as a wit-twister like the film THE LAST OF SHEILA. Essentially, the film's punch-line issue becomes "Can YOU figure out who the reporter's main source was?" because the final scene at last reveals/confirms WHO that person was. (Most Agatha Christie mystery readers, among others, can figure this out about halfway through, but the sequencing of the components turns it into the film's main point.)
Given its components, which could have been rearranged/re-edited to create a different impact, this COULD have been a much better film. For instance, the question of "who" could have been disclosed early, and the film could then have been a serious work like ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman) or THE VERDICT (starring Paul Newman) or SYRIANA (starring George Clooney). It could then have focused on complex issues like facets of the First Amendment (freedom of the press) vs. national security concerns--or on how the White House repeatedly has lied to us and to Congress about bogus national security concerns in order to justify all sorts of illegal and destructive things (long before we had GWB, there were LBJ and RMN). Could this kind of change have been made? Quite easily: the DVD includes two deleted scenes that could only have been in just such an alternative ending--or something very close to it.
Sadly most of the actors were wasted in this film. Vera Farmiga (the Plame figure) did the most plausible acting job but was "removed" from the film in an unpleasant way. Do I have other objections? Well, one would be the opening scene in which the president is shot: no attempt is made to examine his wound and stop his bleeding. Another would be a small slip of the tongue 32 minutes into the film where a lawyer says "Fifth Amendment issues" when he clearly meant to say "First Amendment issues" (this should have been caught and redubbed). Further, considering how polarized our society is nowadays, quite implausibly this film shows no individuals or groups or organizations protesting against or fighting against the injustices that are occurring.
Not incidentally, Rod Lurie, as director, did make the RIGHT decision to play down the glamourous looks of Kate Beckinsale--and to delete a nude shower scene of hers which would totally have changed the nature of the whole film. And, no, it is NOT included among the deleted scenes; it is merely mentioned during his detailed commentary.
Sharp, engaging take on a journalist protecting her sources
2009-10-02 - The men are real scum in this one. David Schwimmer gets to play a guy who basically gives up on his heroic wife while Matt Dillon gets to play a blood-thirsty prosecutor bent on furthering his career whatever the human cost. Even Alan Alda (minus a fine little speech before the Supreme Court) gets to basically fail in defending his client.
His client is Rachel Armstrong (Kate Beckinsale) a journalist who finds herself in contempt of court for not revealing her source for a story on the outing of a CIA agent. (Shades of the Judith Miller/Valerie Plame Wilson case.) Here instead of the Iraq war we have an assignation attempt on the President supposedly by somebody in Venezuela after which the US takes some military action. Rachel ends up in jail and we get to see her suffer all the deprivations of being jail, getting beaten up, estranged from her son and her husband, who betrays her. She is doing all this to protect a source, and a kind of journalistic honor code. David Swimmer's character isn't interested in journalist honor codes. He is displeased that she cares more about protecting her source than in being with him and her son.
Clearly this is a Belt Way story told as a woman's POV flick. It is engaging and it moves right along. It is sharp, just a tad short of slick. We cannot help but identify with Kate Beckinsale's character. And when we find out at the very, very end whom she is protecting we understand. It is a nice twist, one of the cleverest I've seen in movies in quite a while. The end is just perfect.
I was about to write that "every soccer mom and indeed every mom will identify with Kate Beckinsale's character" but actually not all of them will. But when they see the ending they might change their mind.
See this for the clever twist, for the sharp direction and editing and for a fine performance by Kate Beckinsale.
The Truth Hurts
2009-10-02 - The freedom of the press, issues of national security, and the consequences of standing by one's personal principles are all on trial in "Nothing But the Truth." I'm not sure why the reviews here tend to be so negative, save the ranting of those who fail to see that this film represents two sides.
Kate Beckinsale plays the role of a journalist who writes a story implicating the government's top echelons in declaring an act of war with trumped-up evidence. Matt Dillon plays the prosecutor who pressures her to reveal her source--since that source has violated the law by naming a covert CIA agent, played to great effect by Vera Farmiga. Yes, the plot has some obvious correlations to events of the past few years, which seems to be the thorn in the side of some reviewers, but it gives both sides important things to say. While the film does center around Beckinsale, building sympathy for her, it also gives Dillon's character a chance to stand by his own moral codes to protect his country. The issues of the First and Fifth Amendment are considered here.
"Nothing But the Truth" keeps us hooked by the secret identify of the source that Beckinsale protects with such ferocity. Alan Alda plays her lawyer, while Angela Bassett plays her editor. Though both add layers, it's Beckinsale, Farmiga, and Dillon who drive the story. Beckinsale and Farmiga are strong female characters, both threatened with the losses of marriage and family ties, both feeling persecuted for doing their jobs.
I hold dear the power of the written word and the right to speak the truth. I also believe national security is of vital importance, and I like the fact this film honors that as well. However, a government that cannot be held accountable to faulty actions is in a position to abuse its powers--take recent events in Iran, as an example. As a proud American, I want our President to be able to make decisions, in secret, that protect our country. I also want our leaders to be called to account if they violate the law--as in the Watergate case.
"Nothing But the Truth" forces us to consider principles and integrity from the highest levels down to our personal lives. The film does move a bit slowly at times, mainly because Beckinsale's obvious refusal to budge leaves few questions left to be answered, but the twist at the end helps us understand her bullheadedness.
The truth here hurts. Beckinsale and Farmiga have a lot to lose, and even Dillon must risk accusations of coldheartedness for standing by his own beliefs. Superb acting all around lifts this movie above many others that have tackled this subject. Those who refuse to weigh both sides of this debate fail to understand the tough decisions that faced America's forefathers. I, for one, loved this film.
