*Nothing But The Truth, Maybe -The Film Version

Click On Title To Link To Trailer For Film "Nothing But The Truth".

DVD Review

Nothing But The Truth, starring Kate Bakendale, 2009

In the normal course of my work in this space I don’t generally review current commercial films, except when they provide some kind of political or social comment that is in line with my aims. Or I have an ax to grind. The latter turns out to be the case here. The plot of this film revolves around a First Amendment freedom of the press question of a high profile, Type-A newspaper women protecting a source at least that is the way it unfolds, although it is done in a somewhat ham-handed and obviously benignly liberal way.

On the face of it, a film about the praiseworthy efforts of a doggedly determined print reporter bound, seemingly beyond reason, to protect her source of knowledge about why the President of the United States called in a patently erroneous retaliatory strike on Venezuela (you can see where the problem is already, I assume) seem to be tailor –made for praise from this reviewer. Except everything is wrong here. That includes everything, from the source the reporter is protecting to her refusal to divulge her source under very trying circumstances, to say the least, (I won’t give that source up here either. I am not tattle-tale and moreover that revelation provided the only real twist in this whole sorry plot line.) to the nasty twist and turns of the federal special prosecutor who is trying to nail her in the interest of “national security”.

Don’t get me wrong, or at only get me wrong a little. We better fight tooth and nail to maintain a free press and other forms of expression against governmental interference. But one must pick and choose one’s battles. Off of this plot line and off the moral dilemmas the reporter willingly placed herself in there is certainly a question about her political acumen, to say nothing of her common sense.

But the real issue here, aside from the liberal bend of putting up the good fight to maintain the free press that drives the film, is that the vaunted “forth estate”, of late, has been pretty sorry in real life when it comes to opposing the American government’s propaganda lines. A medium that was asleep at the wheel, in many cases willingly so, during the lead up to the Bush portion of the Iraq War, and for a long time after, is hardly worthy, as the people associated with this production seem to think, of positive treatment, even when one could admire the tenacity if not the common sense of the reporter in this drama. While we desperately need to protect free expression this film did not add much to our real life knowledge about how to defend it. Certainly not the way it played out in this film, that is for sure.