THE SOCIAL RECKONING

by Victoria Alexander

Lots of gibberish, a whistleblower, a terrifying Zuckerberg and a hounding, pounding soundtrack.

Aaron Sorkin, the writer and director of THE SOCIAL RECKONING, starts the film with lots of views of legs sitting and walking. What’s up with this? A hysterical woman, Kayleigh (Portia Doubleday), has a crazy confrontation with police who stop to help her when they see her standing on a busy highway beside her car. Kayleigh goes stark raving mad. She posts the encounter on a white-supremacist Facebook group.

Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison), who works as a data engineer at Facebook, sees the video. Shocked about Facebook’s policies on allowing extremist content, she expresses concern. With no help from the Facebook executives, she steals thousands of Facebook internal documents. Haugen enlists Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White) at the Wall Street Journal. Horwitz brings Haugen’s findings to his boss, Kris (Betty Gilpin), San Francisco bureau chief of WSJ. Now Haugen is a whistleblower. Kris reluctantly agrees to Horwitz’s plea that this is a new arena of tech politics and its unethical practices need to be exposed.

No Blanket Immunity for Theft: Whistleblower protection laws (such as the Whistleblower Protection Act, False Claims Act, or Dodd-Frank) protect employees from retaliation for reporting wrongdoing, not for stealing property, breaking into computer systems, or violating non-disclosure agreements

Haugen and Horwitz now have to put all the thousands of emails and documents into articles. WSJ prints Horwitz’s articles.

Now the film shifts gears. It is all about lawyers. Facebook’s CEO is Mark Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong). If this is a true characterization of Zuckerberg, he is terrifying. Strong gives his Zuckerberg a robotic meanness and a frightening demeanor with an ice-cold face without any moving muscles.

Sorkin has been around a very long time and must have done a scholar’s research on Zuckerberg. If this portrayal is even ten percent real, how did Zuckerberg find someone to marry (Priscilla Chan) and have children (three girls) with? He would be a horror to live with. Has Mrs. Zuckerberg adopted this behavior?

I now know that Mark Zuckerberg has no friends.

Who will live in his underground “city”? It will withstand the coming apocalypse.

THE SOCIAL RECKONING is said to be Sorkin’s sequel to THE SOCIAL NETWORK, a 2010 film. How many members of today’s movie audience remember this 16-year-old film?

Madison plays the role without being given any memorable scene. Those scenes belong to the supporting cast.

Madison plays the role without being given any memorable scene. Then, she is finally given the ‘girl going to the co-star in the rain without an umbrella and then, soaking wet, taking off her coat and wearing a sexy, low-cut slip dress in black’ scene.

White overplays his role with fury, but why didn’t his character think Haugen came to his apartment with an excuse but really wanted sex? You are left wondering about Horwitz.

She walked across town in the rain without an umbrella to your apartment unannounced. She is wearing a low-cut black dress. Her hair is perfectly wet. She is not wearing underwear. Your move.

Bill Burr is fantastic as Charlie Garrigan, a former Facebook investor and member of Zuckerberg's legal counsel. He knows Zuckerberg well, so he does not listen to his loud criticism.

Betty Gilpin as Kris is frightening in her scene. She is great, and the dark hair suits her.

When a film is dull, the soundtrack has to do the heavy lifting, and that has fallen to Alexandre Desplat. The soundtrack tries to elevate the flat dialogue.

The film is directed in a style that announces it is an Aaron Sorkin film with his rhythms of fast-paced dialogue, people speaking over each other announcing a high-stakes drama that does not suit this story.

“The ALL is Mind; The Universe is Mental.”

🍅 Rotten Tomatoes Certified Critic since 1998. For a complete listof Victoria Alexander's movie reviews on Rotten Tomatoes go to:www.rottentomatoes.com/critic/Victoria-alexander/movies

Principal Reviewer for FilmsInReview: filmsinreview.com

Member of Las Vegas Film Critics Society Personal email: victoria.alexander.lv@gmail.com

“The Alexander UFO Religious Crisis Survey: TheImpact of UFOs and Their Occupants on Religion”Author: Victoria AlexanderSponsored by The Bigelow Foundation