Summary
The story of Reality Winner, here played by Sydney Sweeny, and her arrest.
This film made me angry. It so perfectly points out and captures the American hypocrisy with their love affair with free speech only ever extending out to what they agree with. I think the film wants you to be angry at what happened to Reality, who at the end of the day was leaking information that was in the public good, not selling nuclear secrets to the North Koreans.
It is a thoroughly uncomfortable watch from start to finish as the film ramps up the tension and the claustrophobic nature of the raid. You like Reality within the film feel the walls closing in and increasing escalation.
Sweeny is terrific here and really gives a layered and nuanced performance, I think there is something so heart breaking about the fact that her life is over essentially and she just wants to make sure her animals are okay. Perhaps it is because I am not American and am fairly detached from their news cycle, but this film made me feel bad for Winner in real life and think that the US government want to bully their own citizens into maintaining this image of them being infallible when that just isn’t true.
Overall, this is a great anti-US protest peace illustrating the US’s increasing slip into being an authoritarian fundamentalist nightmare.
4/5
Pros.
Sweeny
The tension
The emotion
The core of the story and the message it has
Cons.
It is unpleasant to watch at times
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Another Millennial Reviewer 