Sorkin takes another run at Facebook

    Judging by Aaron Sorkin's The Social Reckoning, few the world's ill can't be linked to Facebook. An overstatement on my part to be sure, but Reckoning scowls at Facebook for abetting dangerous political extremism, wrecking young lives with cyberbullying, and allowing Jan. 6 rioters to post about their assault on the Capitol.

   Social Reckoning isn’t entirely wrong in its assertions, but Sorkin, working from his own screenplay, has drained much of the suspense from a story built around two characters, a Wall Street Journal reporter (Jeremy Allen White) and a Facebook whistleblower (Mikey Madison).

   Madison’s Frances Haugen began as a true-believing coding engineer intent on saving Facebook from abandoning its professed desire to become the world’s town square.

   By the time the movie opens, Facebook already has attained trillion-dollar status, and Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong) has become an autocratic sphinx mired in capitalist tunnel vision.

   Much of the movie follows the guidelines of a journalistic procedural as White’s Jeff Horwitz, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting, tries to get the goods on Facebook.

   Madison’s Haugen holds the key to Horwitz’s success; Haugen has access to important computer files, but she’s wary of breaking the law by giving them to Horwitz. She initially alerts Horwitz to the story, expecting that his investigative skills will be sufficient to obtain the needed evidence.

    Sorkin has a knack for depicting work-place vibes. The supporting cast rounds out Facebook’s headquarters. Billy Magnussen portrays the smiling head of PR.  Bill Burr plays a hard-boiled former employee, now a consultant who tries to steer Zuckerberg toward social responsibility. Betty Gilpin signs on as Horwitz’s brusque boss.

    The main events, which take place between 2019 and 2021, are undergirded by scenes devoted to a rehearsal in which a crisis manager (Wunmi Mosaku) tries to humanize Zuckerberg for a pending Congressional hearing, no easy task with a man whose deadpan expression never seems to have been interrupted by anything as foreign as a smile.

    The story culminates with a Congressional hearing at which Hougen testifies, leaving us to assume that the problems the movie raises are the bedrock on which Sorkin has built an old-fashioned expose.

     Facebook, the movie contends could have been more responsible, but it would have come with a cost. If the company had refused to post obviously false or inflammatory content, it would have had to accept a one percent loss in profits, one exec says. Zuckerberg declined.

     As is the case with many Sorkin efforts, Reckoning bolsters a talky screenplay that brims with the kind of clever repartee that distinguishes the Sorkin brand, but here can feel a bit formulaic.

     White plays Horwtiz as a good guy and persistent reporter. Madison ably depicts a young woman who’s wrestling with her conscience, but, by the end, it’s difficult to feel as if the movie has reckoned with anything more than a point of view that’s clearly established at the outset.

     Enough of this. I needn’t tell you that Facebook, now Meta, still operates as do the company’s other businesses, which include Instagram, Messenger, and What’sApp.

     As for Zuckerberg, he was one of the tech honchos who late last month was  summoned to the White House to discuss AI … er … I mean Super Intelligence. It all makes you wonder whether any movie involving tech ethics can avoid feeling like yesterday’s news.

The liberals in 'The Hunt' are lethal

After a delay, this violent bit of pseudo-satire arrives in theaters.

The Hunt originally was scheduled to be released last September but was delayed after mass shootings in Texas and Ohio. Violent and armed-to-the-teeth, Hunt has arrived and it’s safe to say that the movie doesn’t live up to its volatile hype.

The Hunt has one of those “what-if” premises. What if a group of liberal elites decided to join forces to hunt down and kill selected members of the various groups it finds “deplorable:" i.e, all those who fall short of the rigid political correctness standards supposedly espoused by liberals or who support an unnamed president who all elitists disdain?

As you might already have guessed, the movie matches its violence with cliches about both those it deems as champagne-sipping liberals and those it deems as backward bigots. Although presented for laughs, the stereotypes are drawn in too broad a fashion to have any real bite.

The Hunt also employs a blood-splattering level of violence, the sort of mayhem you expect from movies in which the carnage occupies the uneasy terrain between humor and repulsion.

The Hunt provides actress Betty Gilpin with a showcase opportunity and she makes the most of the it. Gilpin plays a badass woman who’s captured and hunted by the elites along with 11 others. It's all part of a lethal game. Kidnap the so-called "deplorables." Arm them for the sake of feigned fairness and then hunt them down like dogs.

Unlike her fellow sufferers, Gilpin has near superpowers when it comes to survival. The movie never shows Gilpin’s character spewing racist comments but relies on her southern accent to suggest that she might hold all the "lower-class" prejudices the movie seems to expect her to have.

Oddly, the movie turns Gilpin's Crystal into the only character for whom it's possible to root, which forces the screenplay to engage in some end-of-picture wriggling.

Director Craig Zobel (Compliance) keeps the movie zipping along, but the mixture of violence and humor and humorously depicted violence struck me as skin deep.

When Gilpin’s character squares off against the mysterious woman who runs the hunt (the actress who plays her probably is intended a surprise), the movie pretty much loses all traces of satire in favor of a no-holds-barred knife-wielding battle.

In the end, The Hunt expends most of its creative energy cooking up violent encounters; the rest, not nearly isn't as well thought out. Had The Hunt realized Gilpin’s full potential it might have jettisoned its superficial culture-wars BS and given us a female action hero worthy of a franchise.

'Stuber' chokes on lame jokes, violence

Crummy jokes and a formulaic premise (a mismatched duo fights crime) don't do much to help Dave Bautista and Kumail Nanjiani salvage something from Stuber, a summer wreck of a movie about an Uber driver (Nanjiani) who winds up racing around Los Angeles with a macho cop. The cop (Bautista) needs all the help he can get because he’s just had Lasik surgery and his vision has yet to snap back into focus. Among the things I didn’t care about: Will Bautista's Vic Manning drop his pursuit of a major drug dealer and attend an art show that features work by his daughter (Natalie Morales)? I also found no reason to transcend indifference to another question the movie raises: Will Nanjiani's Stu be able to open a business with a woman (Betty Gilpin) for whom he harbors a long-standing crush? The screenplay (if you insist on calling it that) makes fun of Uber's driver-rating system but it probably would have done better to spend some time considering film-rating systems. The movie’s violent action isn't exciting and the jokes aren't funny. Put those two together and you come up with a big fat whiff. Oh well, if you happen to see Stuber, there’s a hidden blessing. You probably won’t remember it by the time you reach the parking lot.