2 0 1 6. One strike, and you’re out—after posing some unexpectedly tough questions to Presidential candidate Donald Trump, Fox News reporter Megyn Kelly is lambasted by Trump’s fans on the Internet, while the CEO of Fox News, Roger Ailes, offers no support. A new employee, Kayla, wants to be a host of a show, but Ailes’ audition consists of insisting that she lifts her skirt up. Every female host has to be a "bombshell" if she wants to work for Ailes. The ageing host of the network, Gretchen Carlson, is fired, ostensibly due to low ratings, and decides to sue Ailes for sexual harassment. Gretchen finds support in Kayla, who confirms Ailes wanting sexual gratification from women for promotion. Ailes is replaced, while Robert Murdoch takes over Fox News until a new replacement is found.
“Bombshell” is a bitter commentary on certain corporate companies where women have to “sexually sell” themselves to a male boss in order to get a promotion and climb up the hierarchy, depicting that there were more millionaires using the “Harvey Weinstein-method” than expected, among them even Fox News CEO Roger Ailes. The sequence where Kayla (very good Margot Robbie) wants to advance into a host on a TV show, and her audition consists out of Ailes ordering her to lift up her skirt, more and more, until her underwear is seen, under the excuse that “TV is a visual medium”, really is uncomfortable and gets that dreaded point across. Some dialogues by screenwriter Charles Randolph dissecting Fox News mentality and its aggressive push towards conservative ideology have spark (“People don’t stop watching when there’s a conflict. They stop watching when there isn’t one”; “Ask yourself, what would scare my grandmother or piss off my grandfather? And that’s a Fox story”), yet they are sparse, and the storyline feels too often like a schematic PowerPoint presentation. Even the ending feels anticlimactic and lukewarm. In the 21st century, a certain type of movies based on true events seem to have undergone a Michael-Mooreization of sorts, catering too much towards the liberal viewers. “Bombshell” is more of a docudrama than an actual movie; it thus stimulates more thematically than cinematically, proving that, despite their noble intentions, activist movies mostly do not have that coveted permanent value.
Grade:++
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