The Report, starring Adam Driver, Corey Stoll, and John Hamm, was a hit with the Grandparents of course, but I wasn’t sure it would exactly be a hit for me when I first started watching it. About halfway through I had decided that it was a pretty good movie, and I was invested. I would give this movie a 4 out of 5 stars because although it was one of the better movies I’ve seen this year, it’s still not exactly “my type” of movie.

This movie had me feeling a lot of emotions. The first emotion I felt was surprise. Some of the atrocities committed by the CIA in the movie are just appalling. I have heard inklings before about the Detention and Interrogation tactics used by the US, but never thought it was ever that bad.

Another emotion I felt strongly during the film was shameful. First of all, because these things had been going on, and although I was young, I had no idea at the time. Second of all, because I live in a society where it’s okay for people to take responsibility for their actions, but there seems to be little consequences for the actions of political and government elite. I think that’s part of what made the movie interesting to me, the fact that I was watching this as someone who knew nothing really about the context.

I also felt anger during the film. I was angry because it appeared as thought the United States government seem to lack any moral character when dealing with all of this, aside from Senator Feinstein and Daniel Jones. This movie proved to me that even though I want to believe I can trust our government to represent American citizens and what we want, they clearly don’t. This was proved to me in the film by the amount of times people spoke out against these brutal interrogation policies, and yet these opinions were never into account. As well as this, the lack of education and proof behind their tactics.

This being said, I don’t think the government overall is bad. There were multiple people in the film, democrats and republicans, who wanted to expose these tactics to the public. I understand that after 9/11 xenophobia grew out of fear, but what was occurring during these interrogations was just cruel and wrong. I’m happy this movie was recommended to me because I learned about an important piece of history that I don’t think I would have ever found out about otherwise.